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V 


NEW STREAMS 


IN OLD CHANNELS 


SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS 

OF LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 
a 


EDITED BY 


MARY STORRS HAYNES 


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SEP 1 1894] 

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BOSTON 

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1894 




Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

Lothrop Publishing Company. 


All rights reserved, 



INTRODUCTION. 


The simple fact that such a book as this is projected 
is almost enough to justify it, for assuredly it would 
not be undertaken were there not a large and favorable 
reputation upon which it could depend for success. 

To those who, like Emerson, keep their eyes open for 
sight of men of promise and power, the rapid and steady 
growth of Dr. Abbott during the past ten years has been 
a delight and satisfaction. Ilis achievement of reputa¬ 
tion is all the more real and substantial because it has 
been made under the handicap of the mighty figure whose 
place he fills. It was at first thought that he would never 
escape the dwarfing effect of the inevitable comparison, 
and that, like the sons of great men, he might fail of 
deserts properly his own. But he soon escaped this dan¬ 
ger, and early in his ministry to the Plymouth Church 
made it evident that he was about to achieve an independ¬ 
ent reputation. Comparisons are no longer made; not 
because the figure of his predecessor grows less, but 
because Dr. Abbott has developed a full-rounded per¬ 
sonality, and stands squarely on his own feet. And yet 
he is a true successor to Beecher; he succeeds to his 
pulpit and yet makes it his own; he succeeds to his 
thought, and yet he thinks for himself, and, times and 
themes being changed, he is succeeding him in breadth 
and strength of influence. What he may chance to lack 



INTRODUCTION. 


in oratorical splendor he makes up in a certain steadiness 
and coherence of thought—qualities not always present 
in Beecher, who was too heavily charged with genius to 
be always a safe leader; but Dr. Abbott not only “ mar¬ 
shals us the way we are going,” but makes the path plain 
and the steps easy. 

There is, however, no occasion to regard Dr. Abbott 
only as the pastor of the Plymouth Church, however well 
he may fill the high position. The selections which fol¬ 
low are chiefly drawn from his spoken utterances, but the 
seat of his largest influence is the editorial chair. To 
get a true conception of the place and importance of The 
Christian Union it is only necessary to imagine the chasm 
that would be left in case it were suddenly to go out of 
existence. In character and temper, in the theological 
principles it represents, in the practical applications it 
urges, in the unworldliness of its spirit and in the true 
worldliness of its wisdom, it fills a place occupied by no 
other religious journal. Comparisons aside, it is safe to 
say that no other is doing more to shape and direct public 
thought; none are more quoted or more quotable, or share 
in an equal degree the confidence of the public. What¬ 
ever opinions are expressed in it, no one ever suspects a 
sinister motive, or doubts that they are held with abso¬ 
lute sincerity by its editor. I speak of this because The 
Christian Union is Dr. Abbott in journalistic form. Its 
genial temper, its utter candor and uniform courtesy, its 
sympathy with all suffering, its fine and almost child-like 
simplicity are simply the clear reflections of his strong 
personality, while its broad theology and its humane soci¬ 
ology indicate the convictions that underlie his faith and 
life. 

It is hardly necessary to speak either in the way of 
commendation or explanation of one so well known and 
so widely read as Dr. Abbott, but I cannot forbear refer¬ 
ring to the special place he holds in the world of thought 


INTRODUCTION. 


and action. He has reached the period in life when he 
has, so to speak, taken shape, and we are able to see what 
manner of man he is. 

His work lies chiefly in three departments: theology, 
evolution and socialism; things not far apart, and daily 
drawing together, and revealing a common basis. In 
these related fields Dr. Abbott has become a great public 
teacher, and the leading feature of his teaching is that 
he shows how they are related. To him, more than to 
any other in this country, is it due that what is known as 
the New Theology has been made known and explained 
to the people. His thorough and profound apprehension 
of it as an interpretation of the Gospel in the terms of 
the present age, coupled with a clear and concrete style 
and the opportunity for constant utterance, conspire to 
make him its foremost representative. He has followed 
the New Theology to evolution where it points, if indeed 
evolution does not first point to New Theology, as a 
fundamental law and method covering all natural and 
human processes; and to sociology as the practical appli¬ 
cation of Christianity to society, and the field beyond all 
others for present thought and action. 

In these three related fields Dr. Abbott has rendered 
royal service, notably through his “ In Aid of Faith; A 
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,” and countless 
editorials and addresses and sermons, and, more recently, 
in a course of Lowell Institute Lectures on the Evolution 
of Christianity, delivered in Boston, and published by 
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. These'lectures are a 
great achievement as a broad and intelligent presentation 
of the subject, but more especially by reason of having 
thoroughly lodged in the public mind the idea that Chris¬ 
tianity must be interpreted under evolution. The service 
thus rendered is of immeasurable value. If it provokes 
debate and shatters cherished idols of belief, it is none 
the less a great and good work. 


INTRODUCTION. 


We welcome this volume of selections because so much 
that is sententious, and beautiful and inspiring, is con¬ 
tinually dropping from his lips and flowing from his pen. 
It is not often that an author or preacher can endure to 
have his thoughts dissevered from their setting and put 
by themselves. This volume shows how well he bears 
this crucial test. Minds of a high order tend to con¬ 
densed and axiomatic expression. They think until they 
see, and then, throwing aside the process, utter the truth 
or principle readied. Especially is this the case when 
the discussion of truth is carried on in a mind of profound 
moral convictions and religious feeling, and in the pres¬ 
ence of near and vital interests; then the speech becomes 
like the dropping of pearls or the blossoming of flowers. 

How surely this is true of the great preacher and editor 
whose words follow, the reader will soon learn. 

T. T. Munger. 


NEW STREAMS IN OLD CHANNELS 







New Streams in Old Channels 


New theology is only a deeper apprehension of 
the spiritual truths of the old theology. 

# 

# * 

A theology that has life in it is a growing the¬ 
ology ; and a growing theology is a changing the- 
ology. Theology that has not life in it is a dead 
theology — that goes without saying — and of what 
use is a dead theology? The tree that does not 
change is a dead tree; and the faith that does not 
change is a dead faith — that is not faith at all. 
Life — that is what the world needs; life in its 
thought, life in its emotions, life in its life, and to 
say to men : You must think only what the world 
thought in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, is 
to say to the world, You must not think at all. 

# 

All true theology is at once new and old; for 
life is perpetually new, and truth is eternally old, 
and between the two there is no more real conflict 
than between the leaves which this spring has put 

1 



2 


NEW STREAMS 


upon the trees, and the trunks and limbs of many 
years’ growth which those leaves clothe wdtli a new 
life. That there is a God whom we can know per¬ 
sonally; that he has made himself known in human 
history, and is ever making himself known in Chris¬ 
tian experience; that all the Scriptures are to be 
interpreted in harmony with the Christ, who is the 
perfect and infallible revelation of God’s own char¬ 
acter; that love, pure, righteous, and ever flowing, 
is at the heart of this universe, and is working out 
the redemption of man — these truths are as old 
as eternity, but they need to be reasserted with 
new assurance of faith, in new forms, and with new 
applications, because the rationalism of unbelief 
assails them on the one hand, and the rationalism 
of a too purely intellectual theology forgets and 
ignores them on the other. 

# * 

Our New Theology is not the doctrine that men 
have done nothing that needs forgiveness, and need 
no God to forgive them. It is profoundly the re¬ 
verse ; it is the doctrine that sin is wrought into 
the very fiber and structure of man, and that pen¬ 
alty is a part of the sin, and must exist so long as 
sin is there, and that forgiveness is the throwing 
of the sin out, and putting new life in. 

# 

# # 

Theology exists for religion, not religion for the¬ 
ology; and the function of theology, be it old 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


3 


theology or new theology — put what name on it 
you will — is to develop the life of God in the soul 
of man. 

* 

* * 

What was peculiar in Christ’s teaching was not 
the doctrine which he taught, but the power with 
which he taught it. It was vital in him, and there¬ 
fore vital as it went forth from him. It was his 
life; and therefore he made it the life of others. 
He was not the first to declare the fatherhood of 
God; but he was the first to live as a son of God. 
He was not the first to declare the doctrine of self- 
sacrifice ; but he was the first to lay down his life 
in a devotion, unstained by a single unworthy act 
of self-will or self-love. The teaching of Christ 
was not new theology, but his life was a new life. 

# 

# # 

There ought to be no dire conflict between the 
old sermon and the new, between the old theology 
and the new. The new ought to be built out of 
the old, as Solomon’s temple was built out of the 
materials that David gathered; it ought to grow 
out of the old, as the new wood grows out of the 
old vine. He who cuts his vine down to the roots 
for a new planting every spring will never get a 
grape; neither will he who never prunes the vine, 
and never permits new wood. The objections of 
infidelity are not the same as those of fifty years 
aox>, therefore the answers cannot be the same. 


4 


NEW STREAMS 


The sins are not the same, therefore the rebukes 
cannot be the same. There are some ministers who 
accomplish nothing, despite good cannon and good 
ammunition, for they fire all their shot at a fort 
long since abandoned by the enemy. The counsel 
which every religious teacher should give himself 
is that which Grant gave to Sheridan: “Push 
things; ” and, you observe, he who pushes things 
keeps moving. The Luther, the Calvin, the Fin¬ 
ney of our day must render his service and win his 
reputation, not by repeating what they said, but 
by studying our religious needs as they studied 
theirs, and meeting the issues of our time with the 
courage with which they met the issues of their 
time. 

# 

* * 

No theology, new or old, can deserve the name 
of Christian which does not harmonize with Christ’s 
life, character, and teaching. Christian experience 
is such a standard. “ By their fruits ye shall know 
them,” is Christ’s own prescription for the mea¬ 
surements of prophets and prophecy. Nothing is 
wholly false which has produced the fruits of the 
Spirit in human life, and nothing is divinely true 
which wholly fails so to do. 

* 

* * 

The world needs neither new theology nor old 
theology, but God, and he who can bring the heart 
of man and the heart of God together is doing the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


5 


work of the world’s Saviour, however imperfect 
may be the philosophy which he holds. “ The 
words that I speak unto you,” says Christ, “they 
are spirit and they are life.” If the words which 
the minister speaks are spirit and are life, they are 
truth, however imperfect the vehicle in which they 
are conveyed. If they are not spirit and not truth, 
the vehicle is but a hearse which carries a corpse. 




We are not what we are ; we are what we desire 
to be, what our purpose is, what our resolves make 
us. You can set that before you. You cannot 
win the race instantly, but you can begin to run it. 
You cannot instantly win victory, but you can arm 
for the conflict. You cannot perfect the scholar¬ 
ship, but you can enter the school. And any man 
is going on in sin who is not seeking to bring his 
life up to the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Go, and sin no more, means beginning to live justly 
and to love mercy. It means setting yourself to 
repair all the evil of the past, whatever it is, in so 
far as the power of repair lies within your hands. 
It means looking within to see what there is poi¬ 
sonous and bitter in the fountain out of which 
the stream flows, and seeking that the fountain 
may be purified, and that the life may be made 
whole and clean and true. 

* 

# * 

Divine aspirations do not make a divine life. A 
divine desire does not make a divine life. Wishing 
G 














IN OLD CHANNEL S. 


7 


to be good, desiring to be good, purposing to be 
good, choosing to be good — these are not good¬ 
ness. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, 
Lord ; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
which is in heaven. The wish of a dream is very 
different from the will of a life. Nothing serves 
but patient, continuous, persistent willing. 

* * 

You may wish for wealth, and stay poor. You 
may wish for reputation, and be dishonored. You 
may wish for knowledge, and yet be shut up to a 
life of relative ignorance. You may wish for influ¬ 
ence, and yet be so hedged about that all your life 
shall seem to be spent in vain. Bjut the soul that 
longs for a stronger conscience, a clearer faith, a 
more eager and joyous hope, a diviner reverence, 
shall not go unsatisfied. This is the one hunger 
to which God promises ever and always result. 
“ Blessed' are they that hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, for they shall be filled.” 

* 

* * 

Not what we know: ignorance does not defile 
us. Not what we have done : doing does not make 
us. But what in the higher developments of our 
soul, what in our reverence, in our hope, in our 
faith, in our love, we are — that really makes us. 
The house may be a stone palace such as the Doges 
of Venice lived in, or it may be a tent set up to¬ 
night to be taken down to-morrow. And the in- 


8 


NEW STREAMS 


terior may be spread with all rich hangings from 
the East, magnificent in equipment; or the walls 
may be barren and the floor be sanded. But if in 
the house, whether rich or poor, well equipped or 
ill equipped, there is a tenant dwelling, whose soul 
is ever looking upward, whose soul is ever beckoned 
forward, whose soul is ever reaching outward, re¬ 
vering, loving, hoping — it is a prince that dwells 
there, whether he dwell in palace, in hovel, or in 
tent. 

* * 

Life is too vast to rest in any one form of ex¬ 
pression ; if art had painted its last picture, carved 
its last statue, written its last poem, interpreted its 
last symphony, there would still remain an unut¬ 
tered world of feeling, thought and poetry; if 
science had discovered its last fact and proclaimed 
its last law there would still be unsatisfied aspira¬ 
tions, unanswered questions, unemployed activities. 
Science and art are noble helpers of man’s higher 
life, but there comes a point where he parts com¬ 
pany with them ; they cease to express the possi¬ 
bilities of life for him ; he leaves them behind to 
travel into a realm w T hose vastness passes their 
power of speech. 

* 

# # 

The artist stands at his easel painting the por¬ 
trait of one before him; and T go and look at it, 
and scowl, and shrug my shoulders, and say: “ It 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


9 


is not like him; I can see the ghost of an appear¬ 
ance looking out through the lusterless eyes and 
the untrue features, hut it is not my friend.” And 
the artist says, “Wait! when I have finished the 
picture, and put the purpose — the soul — into it, 
then judge, not before.” So Christ sits for his por¬ 
trait, and God takes me as a canvas, and paints, 
and ever and anon I grow foolish enough to look 
at myself, and shake my head in despair, and say, 
“ That will never be a portrait,” and then I come 
back to his promise: “ You shall be satisfied when 
you awake in his likeness,” and I am satisfied be¬ 
forehand in this hope that he gives me. 

* 

* * 

Whoever can see divinity in another, and can 
desire it for himself, has in him the possibility of a 
divine life; divine mercy is ready to shine on the 
seed and make the possible a reality. 

# * 

The cry of the human being from the earliest 
age — the cry of Job — “Oh! that I knew where I 
might find Him,” is still the cry of humanity. All 
history is the search after God. All science is the 
thinking of the thoughts of God after him, the try¬ 
ing to find him — whether the scientist knows it or 
not. All art is the search after the ideal art as it 
exists in some true divine artist. All music is the 
endeavor to discover the truth of music, larger and 
grander than any one interpreter can give it to us 


10 


NEW STREAMS 


— yea, than all interpretations gathered together 
in one could give. All love — of lover, wife, hus¬ 
band, child, patriot — is but the fragmentary ex¬ 
pression of the Infinite and the Eternal. To this 
hunger Christ is the answer; to this “ cry of the 
human” he is the response of the divine. 

* 

The needle points to the pole thinking it is the 
pole that draws it. Mistaken needle! It is kept 
true to the pole by the magnetic current which en¬ 
wraps the world, and binds these two in one. So 
the heart of humanity looks up into the skies, looks 
back into the past, looks forward into the future, 
looks everywhere for Him who draws them to him¬ 
self. O, mistaken souls! God enwraps the universe 
with his presence, and he has come in shadowed 
and veiled presence in Jesus Christ, in order that 
he may show that God and man are one, with a 
perfect and indissoluble unity. 

# 

# # 

At the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico are two cur¬ 
rents; one the great warm current that flows out of 
the Gulf of Mexico and carries the inspiring warmth 
all along our coast, and then, spreading out in a 
fan-like form, bathes all the shore of Europe, and 
carries the fig and the olive and the grape wherever 
it goes; the other the cold current flowing down 
from the Arctic Ocean into the Gulf of Mexico. 
So in life are two currents flowing in opposite 


IN old channels. 


11 


directions — the cold and the warm. Which way 
is your life carrying you? Are you carrying in 
your mind and heart the Arctic or the Tropic Zone 
— flowing with the love of God in your soul, to 
bless whatever life you touch, or flowing with the 
cold, cold current of selfishness, never to bless, un¬ 
less here or hereafter the warm light that comes 
from the sun above transforms and renews your 
spirit ? 

* 

# # 

All the processes of life are either up toward 
God from dormant divinity, or down and away 
from God from dormant divinity. You know that 
sometimes an ancient picture has been taken by an 
artist to be a poor one, and he thought more of his 
own work than he thought of the old master, and 
so he has taken this canvas, and has painted over 
it a new picture; and then it has been observed 
sometime by some one that here was a modern 
picture painted over the old one, and the skillful 
artist has taken the necessary chemicals, and little 
by little has carefully washed off the superimposed 
painting that was obliterating the rare and valuable 
picture of the past. Now you are doing one or 
two of these things. God’s image is in you. You 
are either washing off that image which inheritance 
and education and your own faults and follies have 
superimposed on God’s image in you; either thus 
little by little the divine image is coming out 


12 


NEW STREAMS 



clearer and clearer in you, or else the reverse proc¬ 
ess is going on, and with brush and palette you 
are obscuring the divine image, and painting over 
it something earthly and sensuous. 

* 

* * 

Woe unto the man who is self-satisfied before he 
is God-satisfied. 





Love is the great central, essential fact of God’s 
nature. God is love. All moral attributes are but 
inflections of love, as all colors are but rays of the 
pure sunlight. Justice is love looking upon the 
wronged and considering what it can and ought to 
do to right him. Mercy is love looking upon the 
wrong-doer and considering what it can do to cure 
him. Pity is love looking upon suffering and con¬ 
sidering what it can do for its relief. Sympathy or 
compassion — one word is derived from the Greek, 
the other from the Latin — is love entering into 
the life of another and sharing it with him ; it is 
experiencing with another; it is love rejoicing 
with those that rejoice, and weeping with those 
that weep. 

* 

* * 

We are in this world like a child who plays upon 
the floor with a disintegrated map, which she does 
not know how to put together. Here is some 
father-love, and here some mother-love, and here 
some brother-love, and here some wife-love, here 


13 


14 


NEW STREAMS 


some love that is wrathful against wrong, and 
here some love that is beautiful with suffering, and 
here some love that is merciful and compassionate 
toward the sinful — love all broken up in frag¬ 
ments ; put them together. Take your life for this 
task, and put them together; and when all the 
fragments of life are put together you will find the 
map is love, for life is God and God is love. 

# 

* * 

Love is the profoundest craving of the human 
soul; there is no hunger like heart hunger, and 
God hungers for the love of his children with a 
yearning of which all paternal and maternal heart 
hunger is but a shadow and a hint. 

* 

* * 

How many kinds of love are there in the world ? 
Only one kind of love. The diamond does not 
have a light at the heart of it. The diamond 
catches the sunlight and flashes it back ; and the 
mother catches the divine love and flashes it back, 
and the hero catches the divine love and flashes it 
back, and the citizen catches the divine love and 
flashes it hack. Justice is love, and mercy is love, 
and pity is love, and they are all an inflection of 
the divine love. 

* 

* * 

There is no love that is worthy of the name of 
man unless it is worthy of the name of God. There 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


15 


is no mother love that has ever reached its true 
consummation unless her love is as deep as God’s 
love. There is no father love which has reached 
its consummation unless it is as strong as God’s love. 
There is no love for friend, or man for country, or 
Christian for church, that has yet reached its ideal 
unless it is as eternal and as undying as the love of 
the Almighty and All-Loving God. 

* 

* * 

We learn love only by loving. Love is like an 
electric current — there is no current unless the 
circuit is complete. 

* 

* * 

If a man has love in his heart there is no place he 
may not go with safety; without love in his heart, 
there is no place he can go to with safety. There is 
no danger to a man so long as what he does he 
does truly, really, and at the heart of him for the 
sake of others. 

* 

* * 

Love is the golden key that admits the soul to 
sacred communion with Christ. The doors of the 
Church may open to other keys, but the door to 
Christ’s heart opens to this, and this alone. 

* 

* * 

Love is the only true thrift. The merchant who 
gathers wealth for himself lives unsavingly; he who 
administers it for others is truly thrifty. Stewart’s 
wealth is scattered, Peabody’s abides. The man 


16 


NEW STREAMS 


who uses power for self lives unsavingly; he who 
administers it for others builds for eternity. Napo¬ 
leon scattered, Washington perpetuated. He who 
writes, teaches, preaches for fame lives unsavingly; 
for fame is as ephemeral as the dew. He who 
works in thought for others is immortal; his works 
do follow him, as the grass and flowers live, blessed 
by the dew. 

* 

* * 

Love and trust are greater deterrents from 
wrong-doing than fear; men are more easily weaned 
from sinful courses by spiritual sympathy than by 
inflicted penalty; more liars have been cured of 
falsehood by implicit confidence than were ever 
cured by the rod; love casts hate out of the human 
soul, and wrath and bitterness intrench it there. 

* 

* * 

Love seeketh not her own; is not ambitious, 
pushing, self-assertive, self-seeking. It may be 
angry. 

* 

* * 

There is no wwath like the wrath of love. But 
it is not irritable, cross, snappish. It punishes, but 
it is not vexed; it is angry, but it is not impatient; 
it rebukes, but it never scolds. 

* 

* * 

This is Christian love — not to love our neighbor 
as we love ourselves; not to make our own self- 
love the standard of our thought and service of 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


IT 


others — but to love them as the mountain loves 
the valleys, which denudes itself that it may make 
the valley fruitful, and keeps no account of its an¬ 
nual gift of fertile soil, nor asks for any other return 
than a sight of the wealth which it has given to its 
unconscious neighbor, and of the joy which it has 
bestowed thereon. 

* 

* * 

Love is the “secret of Jesus.” It was this which 
sent him into the world, which prompted all his 
actions, which constrained Paul, which never fails 
in its arduous task, and, recognized or not, is the 
source of every philanthropic and self-denying 
effort which has ever blessed mankind. 

* 

* * 

Love was not a mere incident of Christ’s life; it 
was the essence of his life. He lived for love. Love 
was the inspiration of his life. From beginning to 
end the problem with him was always, not how 
much he might get out of humanity, nor how he 
could hold an even balance with mankind, but how 
much he could pour out of himself into the hearts 
and lives of others; not how much he could enrich 
himself, but how much by his own self-sacrifice he 
could enrich others. As a river rises in the mount¬ 
ains and flows down from its cradle to its grave in 
the ocean, and takes along in its journey the drain¬ 
age of all the valleys, and the sewage of all the 
towns and cities, and swallows up the filth, and 


18 


NEW STREAMS 


gives back healing and health, and waters the val¬ 
leys while it is draining them, and turns the busy 
mill, and never asks what it can receive, but only 
what it can give, so flows the life of Christ from 
that Bethlehem cradle to that Calvary grave, tak¬ 
ing men’s burdens, their sorrows, their tears, their 
sins, and giving them back hope, comfort, health, 
righteousness, love — a river of mercy from the 
beginning to the end. 

* 

* * 

Love is not a peculiar characteristic of the Chris¬ 
tian. The brute loves the hand that feeds and 
caresses it. That which is characteristic of God is 
that he is love, and that he first loved us; love 
springing uncaused in his own bosom to those that 
were unlovely and unworthy of his love. He that 
is a true child of his Heavenly Father will have 
the same spirit of love; it will be spontaneous, un¬ 
caused, uncalled for. He who has this love is per¬ 
fect, as his Father that is in Heaven is perfect; not 
sinless, not without spot, or blemish, or wrinkle, or 
any such thing, but catholic, complete, all-embrac¬ 
ing; imperfect, perhaps, but not partial; following, 
perhaps with many lapses and failures, but not 
refusing to follow wherever Christ leads because 
pride or passion prohibits. 

* 

* * 

Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in 
the truth ; it will not listen to scandal; it does not 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


19 


read the noisome revelations of modern society 
made every now and then in our daily newspapers; 
it does not buy the penny-dreadful to gloat over 
the last divorce suit or the latest bank defalcation. 
It never rubs its hands and chuckles, and says: 
Aha, aha! another church member fallen. 

* 

* * 

Love makes glorious the most menial services, and 
the loveless services are menial, however rendered. 
* 

* * 

Love thinketh no evil; never searches for evil 
motives for good deeds—rather for good motives 
for evil deeds — and so it never gossips; knows 
nothing of that carrion feeding which is the com¬ 
monest occupation of small society. 

* 

* * 

Religion is not in speech, or doctrine, or vision, 
or gifts, or martyr sacrifices : it is in love. Love is 
the only test. He who loves and is silent, loves and 
is doubtful, loves and is prosaic, loves and gives not, 
loves and suffers not, is better than he who speaks, 
believes, has a mystic’s faith, gives, and suffers, and 
yet loves not. 

* 

* * 

Love'suffereth long and is kind; it is no evanes¬ 
cent emotion ; no dew shining like diamonds in the 
grass to be drank up and disappear in the first hot 
sun. It suffers long, and still is kind : loving on, 
not for reward, but because it must to satisfy the 


20 


NEW STREAMS 


necessities of its own inherent nature; serving as 
faithfully in thankless service as in service under¬ 
stood and honored. 

* 

* * 

Love envieth not: it has no mean, miserable de¬ 
sire to pull another down to its own level; will not 
climb to preferment on the shoulders of others ; 
cannot intrigue. 

* 

* * 

Three things abide forever: faith, or the vision 
of God ; hope, or the desire for God ; love, or one¬ 
ness with God. But the greatest of these is love. 

* 

* * 

Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up: the 
loving soul never rolls its own reputation over and 
over like a swe§t morsel; never plumes itself before 
its own imagination ; never looks at itself in the 
pleasure of pride, or puts itself where others may 
look and admire. 

* 

* * 

Love doth not behave itself unseemly: it is not 
careless and inconsiderate ; love is the only true 
etiquette. 

* 

* * 

Love beareth all things ; and this is the threefold 
secret of its bearing : it trusteth all things; would 
rather be a thousand times deceived than cherish a 
suspicious and distrustful spirit; when it can trust 
no longer, it hopeth all things, still looking for 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


21 


some turn that shall bring good out of evil; and 
when it can neither trust nor hope, it endureth all 
things. O, sacred love ! thou art indeed more elo¬ 
quent than speech, wiser than knowledge, more 
wonderful than the mystic’s faith, a greater gift 
than all giving, and the only true martyr spirit. 

* 

* * 

Love never faileth. It is immortal. Prophe¬ 
cies, tongues, knowledge, are all transitory. Our 
best theology is a theology of fragments. Each 
age unlearns what the age before had learned ; or 
so learns it anew as to make the old learning seem 
false. We are all partialists in knowledge. We 
know in part, and we teach in part. And all our 
knowledge and all our teaching is but to conduct 
us to love. When we have reached our journey’s 
end we shall dismiss our guide. Knowledge is 
childhood; love is manhood. Theology is the 
alphabet; love is the literature ; and when we have 
come to understand and read the literature, we no 
longer spell it out painfully, one letter at a time. 
Love knows instantly, instinctively, intuitively. It 
reads truth by words, sentences, pages, not by letters. 
The intellect shows only the reflection of truths, 
shadowed dimly in the mirror. Love turns its back 
upon the glass, and sees the truth face to face. 
Knowledge looks for God in the glass, and sees his 
dim image there; love turns dissatisfied away from 
the reflection which knowledge brings her, and 


22 


NEW STREAMS 


embraces God himself. Knowledge sees in the 
glass, dimly; love, face to face. The babe lying on 
the mother’s lap knows the mother as the mother 
knows the child — knows it interiorly, personally, 
spiritually; knows. And the child of God, look¬ 
ing up into the face of God, knows God as God 
knows his child. “ We understand one another,” 
is the prayer of such a child, whom love has taught 
what knowledge never teaches. 


The road to a great humility is a great pride; 
and no man is ever truly humble unless he is proud 
first. 

* 

* * 

Humility is not walking on all-fours, but it is 
getting down on all-fours to carry somebody else 
when you have been erect, and can walk erect if 
you like. It is not lying down in the mud because 
you are mean, but it is lying down in the mud that 
some one else may walk over you. Christ was hu¬ 
mility embodied because Christ had that conscious¬ 
ness of divinity in him, of which he emptied himself 
that he might fill others. 

* 

* * 

The world esteems the proud-spirited; Christ 
the poor in spirit; for to such it is easy to obey the 
heavenly King, to follow Him who for love’s sake 
became a servant. The lowly in spirit accept re¬ 
buke, exercise repentance, and make confession 
without the hard battle with pride of their more 
high-spirited neighbors. Life is a school, and a 

23 


24 


NEW STREAMS 


docile disposition is the first condition of happiness 
in its pupils. Christ’s character is the best interpre¬ 
tation of his teachings; and he who was meek and 
lowly in heart knew how to meet indignities with 
a quiet dignity that repelled insult, and even turned 
contempt into awe. It is not the little-spirited but 
the lowly-spirited whom he commends. 


What difference whether I am to root down in 
the earth where the worms crawl, or am up on the 
tree where the birds sing, if I am only helping to 
make God’s tree ? What odds whether I am the 
stone down in the foundation where no eye ever 
sees me, or the cross on top where the sunlight 
never leaves me from sunrise to sunset, if I am 
helping make God’s church? 

* 

* * 

To be God’s armor-bearer is more glorious than 
to be the world’s commander-in-chief; as to have 
served as a drummer-boy in the American army is 
more glorious than to have been a Tory colonel. 


The worst vices are the best virtues run to seed. 
Pride is the worst of vices and the best of virtues. 
A man with pride of character is hopeless of attain¬ 
ing or maintaining virtue. To be humble is not to 
think meanly of one’s self. Christ was humble ; 
but he knew he was Lord and Master, and told his 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


25 


disciples so. To be humble is, knowing your char¬ 
acter and abilities, to be willing to take a lower 
place, and perform a menial service. A private 
may know more than his superior officer; he is 
humble if, knowing that, he is willing to work 
faithfully under him. 

* 

* * 

Humility consists in thinking not too highly of 
ourselves, but soberly, as we ought to think. A 
right, wise, true judgment of one’s self is a pre¬ 
requisite to a right, wise, and efficient use of one’s 
self. There is evil in an exaggerated opinion of 
one’s abilities. Self-conceit is a fatal vice. He 
who is encased in it is impervious to criticism. 
But to entertain a degraded, unworthy, or belittled 
opinion of one’s self is also a vice, as fatal to effi¬ 
ciency, if not to character. Self-conceit is a vice ; 
self-esteem is a virtue. It needs cultivation. 

* 

* * 

Humiliation is God’s method of exaltation. Hu¬ 
mility is the sign of love. That a peasant born 
should endeavor to raise the peasant class is no 
great evidence of unselfish love, because he rises 
with his class; or, if not, class interest is a quasi 
self-interest. But if the noble becomes a peasant, 
if the Oxford graduate takes up his home in the 
east of London, if the collegian bred goes to For¬ 
syth Street, if the Moravian missionary sells him¬ 
self into slavery, if the Son of God lays aside his 


26 


NEW S TEE AMS 


divinity and enters into life, lie thereby witnesses 
to a love unselfish, self-sacrificing, strong. This 
humiliation is the sign of Messiahship because it is 
the sign of love. For humility is not—and this 
needs to be constantly repeated — thinking meanly 
of one’s self ; it is devoting one’s self, with full con¬ 
sciousness of one’s powers, to lowly service, or 
the service of the lowly. It is the humility of him 
who entered life at the manger and left it by the 
cross, and was from the manger to the cross the 
friend of publicans and sinners. 





Religion is not merely a kind of emotion, it is a 
principle of life. It is love, not only in the heart, 
but in all the experience, outward and inward; rul¬ 
ing all conduct, controlling feet in the journey of 
life, hands in life’s toil, eyes in looking, tongue in 
speaking. 

* 

* * t. 

No soul has come to a realization of the Eternal 
Presence except through that manifestation which 
the Infinite Unknown has made of himself in the 
Incarnate Son. Other religions abound with ex¬ 
pressions of heart-hunger after God. Only the 
Christian religion has produced the peaceful sense 
of nestling in God’s bosom. 

* 

* * 

An individual who practices Christianity, but 
does not profess it, is more Christian than a pro¬ 
fessing Christian who does not practice it. A pro¬ 
fessed saint whose life promotes sinfulness is not 
so good as a professed sinner whose life promotes 
saintliness. It is best to put on your regimentals 
27 





28 


NEW STREAMS 


when you go into battle; but it is better to go into 
the battle with plain clothes than to stay out of 
the battle with your uniform on. To acknowledge 
allegiance to God with the lips, and do as you 
please, is not religion. To deny allegiance to God 
with the lips, and do what he w T ills, is not an ideal 
religion, but it is the better religion of the two. 

* 

* * 

Religion is the life of God in the soul of man. 
It is a real divine life. Theology is the science of 
that life. . . . The questions of religion are 

questions of experience — they are vital — they 
are all, How shall I live? The questions of the¬ 
ology are intellectual; they are all, What shall I 
think about life ? 

* 

-its- 

I think that we are living in a truly religious 
age; an age less theological, but more religious, 
than the ages that are past. There is more desire 
to-day to know how to find God, if there is less 
curiosity to define him. There is more desire in 
the Church to get rid of sin, if there is less to 
inquire curiously where it is, and where it came 
from. 

* 

* * 

We believe that religion is all centered about 
God; that it is God’s gift, not man’s manufacture; 
that it is never invention, but always discovery — 
the discovery of God by man; the revelation to 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


29 


man of God, the life of God in the soul of man. 
And to help man to find God, to help God to re¬ 
veal himself to man, and to promote the life of 
God in the soul of man — this is the end of all 
services and ceremonies, all creeds and sacraments, 
all preaching and teaching, all ministry of Church, 
Bible, nature and life. 

* 

* * 

Religion is partnership with God. The most 
irreligious work in the world is the religious work 
that has not a God in it; and there is no truer 
religious work than the work of the statesman or 
the merchant or the lawyer, if he is working for 
God, and God is working with him. There is no 
such profanation as a pulpit that has not God in 
it, and there is no more sacred ground in all the 
world than the lawyer’s office .if God is in it. 
Every bush has God in it. When our eyes are 
opened we see that it is all aflame; and then we 
take our shoes from off our feet and know that we 
are on holy ground; and it is only because we were 
before dull of vision that we did not see. 

* 

* * 

I heard the other day two butterflies, on the 
edge of a flower, discussing 1 . One said, “We can¬ 
not know there is any honey in the flower; no 
butterfly ever found it there, no butterfly ever 
will.” The other said, “Well, nevertheless, I think 
there must be some.” And while they debated it, 


30 


NEW STREAMS 


gnostic and agnostic, a humming-bird flew in and 
ran his long bill into the flower, and sipped the 
sweet, and was gone. To debate whether there is 
beauty and truth in this Word of God, whether 
there is beauty and truth in the world, whether 
there is beauty and truth in the Christ that came 
from God — this is not religion. “Oh! taste and 
see that the Lord is good ” — that is religion. 

* 

* * 

All religious instruments are to be measured by 
their power to inspire, and elevate, and broaden, 
and enrich, and educate, and develop, and redeem 
and sanctify man. Religion is not something 
whereby man serves God, it is something whereby 
God serves man. God does not need our service, 
but we do need God’s service. Religion is not 
man taking hold of the ropes and pulling God’s 
car and giving him a ride, it is God reaching down 
and lifting man up, bearing man, as Moses says, 
“ as the eagle bears its young upon its wings.” 

* 

* * 

The Christian religion is unlike all other relig¬ 
ions; it gives the guilty conscience peace. It takes 
away the burden of the past, and leaves the soul 
free to turn its thoughts wholly to the problems 
of the future. As a revelation of law for our 
guidance, it only makes clearer what was before 
dimly disclosed by our own consciences. But as 
an official declaration of pardon, and of its condi- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


31 


tions, it is unique. No other master says, “Come 
unto me, and I will give you rest.” In no other 
master does the remorseful soul find a refuge from 
itself. 

* 

* * 

We are not to be religious by coming out of the 
world, but by living aright in the world. We are 
not to be religious by destroying the world, but by 
using the world for its God-given purposes. There 
is nothing in the world that has not its use, and 
the function of religion is to teach us how to use 
it, not how to get along without it. 

* 

* * 

The flowers got into a debate one morning as to 
which of them was the flower of God; and the rose 
said: “ I am the flower of God, for I am the fair¬ 
est and the most perfect in beauty and variety of 
form and delicacy of fragrance of all the flowers.” 
And the crocus said: “ No, you are not the flower 
of God. Why, I was blooming long before you 
bloomed. I am the primitive flower; I am the 
first one.” And the lily of the valley said mod¬ 
estly : “I am small, but I am white; perhaps I am 
the flower of God.” And the trailing arbutus said- 
“Before any of you came forth I was blooming 
under the leaves and under the snow. Am I not 
the flower of God?” And all the flowers cried 
out: “No, you are no flower at all; you are a 
come-outer.” And then God’s wind, blowing on 


32 


NEW STREAMS 


the garden, brought this message to them : “ Little 
flower§, do you not know that every flower that 
answers God’s sweet spring call, and comes out of 
the cold, dark earth, and lifts its head above the 
sod, and blooms forth, catching the sunlight from 
God and flinging it back to men, taking the sweet 
south wind from God and giving it back to others 
in sweet and blessed fragrance — do you not know 
they are all God’s flowers?” All they that take 
this life of God, and, answering it, come forth from 
worldliness and darkness and selfishness to give 
out light and fragrance and love, they are God’s 
flowers. 

* 

* * 

There is not one of us who cannot bring some¬ 
thing of this life to our fellowmen ; no matter how 
arid your life is, no matter how dull it is, no matter 
how poor it is, it is possible for you to be the giver 
of life to your neighbor — life to your neighbor 
* 

* * 

Of all forms of selfishness religious selfishness is 
the most subtle. Religion we count as a posses¬ 
sion. We “get religion.” It is something that 
belongs to us. We pay for it; world here, for 
Heaven hereafter; so much premium down, so 
much insurance hereafter; repentance to-day, re¬ 
ward to-morrow. Perhaps we even get our reward 
now; then we call it a “present salvation.” “I 
feel to say, brethren, that I enjoy my religion.” 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


33 


What difference does it make whether you do or 
not? Do other people enjoy it? Does your wife 
enjoy it? Do your children enjoy it? Do your 
servants enjoy it? Does your neighbor enjoy it ? 
Does the man on the other side of the counter 
enjoy it T These are the real questions. Religion 
was not given you to enjoy; it was given you to 
work with. What are you doing with it? 

* 

* * 

The ages have seen natural science teaching the 
earth to be a plane, and the starry heavens a vault 
whose movements'foretold the destiny of man; 
political economy teaching that kings ruled by 
divine right, and the people were their children, 
whose only right was the right to obey, God’s vice¬ 
gerent ; successive literatures arise, flourish, and 
die, to be buried in successive layers of fossil forms 
in dead languages; philosophy pass through every 
form, from the spiritualism of Plato to the mate¬ 
rialism of Maudsley; but throughout all these ages 
Religion, changing her vestments, her manner of 
speech, her methods of instruction, has calmly 
taught the same great divine truths — the unity, 
the personality, the righteousness, the forgiving 
kindness, the eternal fatherhood of God. 

* 

The Christian religion is an intolerant religion 
— intolerant of error, of falsehood, of every form 
of iniquity. The evil in religious persecution has 


34 


NEW STREAMS 


not been in the spirit of zealous determination to 
put an end to all disobedience to the truth, but in 
the means by which this determination has been 
executed, and in the spirit of self-will wdrich has 
corrupted it. The spirit which is indifferent re¬ 
specting all religious notions is as far removed 
from the spirit of Christ as is that which is bitter 
toward any. 

* 

* * 

No man can trust to another man to get religion 
for him. No priest or minister can supply your 
lack. No mother by her prayers can make up for 
your prayerlessness. No wife by her purity can 
furnish an equivalent for your worldliness. A 
business man goes from his home, works all day in 
his store, and comes home at night thinking noth¬ 
ing of his meals until he sits down to that which 
has been prepared for him by another’s thought¬ 
fulness. You cannot thus go through life, living 
in the world and unto the world, and trust at last 
to sit down at the marriage supper and partake 
because another has provided for you. 

* 

* * 

Where religion is in disrepute it is largely 
because of its association with unworthy human 
qualities, and its consequent identification in the 
minds of many with them. It is unfortunate when 
a Christian man is not also a man among men, 
able to hold his own place, and make for himself 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


35 


a higher. The youth who is first at the bat or the 
oar, the student who leads his college class, the 
man who has made a reputation or a fortune in 
his profession or business, the woman whose grace 
and accomplishments are the delight of her friends, 
these, having the grace of Christ in their hearts, 
are not by these attainments detracting from its 
power, they are enshrining that grace more worth¬ 
ily, even as a diamond is more fittingly set in a 
ring of gold than in one of pinchbeck. 

* 

* * 

There is no escape from calamity, disease, and 
death; they are a part of the inevitable order of 
human life, and sooner or later on every head the 
tempest breaks. Thank God for the 'peace above 
the floods, for the safety beyond the storms, for 
the silence behind the uproar of the winds, for the 
calm seas at the heart of the typhoon. ~No human 
hand can stay the march of the elements, but the 
stricken can lay hold upon the Arm that moves the 
winds and clouds ; no breakwater of man’s building 
can keep back the rushing tides of sorrow, but the 
wrecked can look up into the face of One who 
walked upon the sea, and through clouds and dark¬ 
ness have vision of Him who bore the sorrows of 
the world that he might make his children feel the 
infinite love behind the mystery of suffering. That 
mystery God cannot explain to us, because the 
mighty range of his purpose sweeps beyond the 


36 


NEW STREAMS 


low horizons of our thought; hut he put himself 
under the hard conditions of our mortal life, he 
has touched our sick ones, he has wept over our 
griefs, he has called back our dead that he might 
make us understand that our sorrows are his sor¬ 
rows, and that in the blackness of our affliction his 
love and power are preparing the dawn of an 
eternal joy. 

* 

* * 

Man is so truly one with God that in the loving 
service of God he finds, also, the bond which unites 
him in loving service to his fellow. And the ser¬ 
vice is not the abnegation, the destruction of self¬ 
hood ; it is finding that true self, in whom there is 
freedom and life, joy and peace. 

* 

* * 

All God’s light poured into the human soul will 
leave it black and ugly carbon if it does not give 
back the light to others. The bush can grow no 
roses unless roses are picked from the bush. 

* 

* * 

He only is the true orator who forgets oratori¬ 
cal ambition and seeks only to serve his audience 
with his truth ; he only is the great writer who 
forgets rhetorical ambition and becomes a servant 
of humanity with his pen ; he only is the true 
statesman who is careless of his own position, and 
seeks only the well-being of his commonwealth; 
he only is a true hero who suffers and battles that 


IN OLD CHANNEL ti. 


37 


lie may by suffering and battling serve his age or 
his community; every other battler, be his rank 
what it may, is but a reputable brigand. 

* 

* * 

In every life that is opened up to the divine pur¬ 
pose God sows the seeds of infinite joy and fruit¬ 
fulness. If care and sorrow make deep furrows, 
the seed falls into richer soil and the harvest is the 
more abundant. God’s gifts come under strange 
disguises, but that is because they are sent to the 
very highest that is in us, and we must gfow into 
their use before they reveal themselves. That 
which seems to hold us back from peace and joy is 
the very thing that makes it possible to attain these 
precious possessions. The bird would find his 
wings useless were there no resisting atmosphere 
to bear him in his heavenward flight, and the soul 
that had never known the throb of sorrow, the 
agony of conflict, the weariness of disappointment, 
would find its aspirations powerless to lift it up¬ 
ward. It is not strength of wing alone but strength 
of wing and resistance of air that make possible 
the skyward flight. 

* 

* * 

Suffering and knowledge lie very near each other, 
and he who has not passed through the one will 
never gain much of the other. The man who has 
never learned in his individual experience the great 
facts of life may make acute observations and bril- 


38 


NEW STREAMS 


liant speculations upon the movement of things 
about him, but he will never gain that mastery of 
the secrets of human joy and sorrow which dis¬ 
closes the deepest knowledge, and commands the 
most fruitful influence. It is only after the iron 
has entered into the soul of Dante that he is able 
to touch those deep chords which thrill with the 
pathos of everlasting farewells, or to draw out 
those transcendent strains which are harmonious 
with the ineffable light of heaven; it is only as 
Savonarola has passed through the fire of tempta¬ 
tion to silence for courtly influence and priestly 
advancement, only as the wrongs and sins of the 
time have burned themselves into his soul that 
he is able to clothe Florence in sackcloth and 
startle Rome itself with the dread of impending 
judgment. 

* 

* * 

It makes all the difference between weariness 
and refreshment in labor whether we work as the 
servants of men or as the servants of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, serving men for his sake. 


The law of sacrifice is the eternal law of life. 

* 

* * 

To deny one’s self is not to lose anything. It is 
to give up the inferior for the superior; the imme¬ 
diate gain for the future and greater gain ; the 
material joy for the spiritual possession. No life is 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


39 


sound, healthy, or genuine which is not full of self- 
denial, and no man or woman has come to any real 
self-mastery until self-denial has ceased to be en¬ 
tirely a cross, and become a deep source of satis¬ 
faction and joy. 

* 

* * 

The noblest and best characters in history have 
been great sufferers, and the noblest and best of 
all was the greatest sufferer of all. There is no 
virtue worth the having except that which counts 
virtue its own reward; which, with the apostles, is 
able to count it all joy to be persecuted for Christ’s 
sake. 

* 

* * 

God’s best gift is his gift of sorrow. The bright¬ 
est diamond is a tear. Crape on the door is the 
token that God’s best angel has been within. The 
empty chair is full. The eyes of love still look on 
you; the silent voice only waits your voice to sing 
with you. The song of the whippoorwill out of 
the darkness of the evening twilight is sweeter than 
the song of the robin in the early dawn. The 
sweetest of all songs is the song in the night. 

* 

* * 

Temptation resisted and sorrow rightly borne 
make wonderful disclosures of truth ; the inquiry 
of every one who passes through these experiences 
ought always to be “What is God teaching?” 
The trial which does not lift a cloud, or open a new 


40 


NEW STREAMS 


outlook upon the world, has failed of its purpose. 
At the end of every Lenten season the sunshine of 
Easter waits ; so at the end of every sorrow borne 
with patience and with a desire to know the will of 
God, there stands some newly-risen hope or pur¬ 
pose which has put on the garments of immortality. 
* 

* * 

God helps us in our sorrows by disclosing to us 
the deeper and nobler truths to the perception of 
which sorrow opens the door. God helps us in all 
our trials, difficulties, and perplexities, not by re¬ 
moving them and so leaving us stationary in moral 
and spiritual growth, but by strengthening us, in¬ 
spiring us, and endowing us with courage and faith 
to suffer and bear and overcome, that we may be 
strong in a strength not lent for occasions, but part 
of ourselves. 

* 

* * 

The man who accepts a principle by habit, or 
only half-consciously, comes out of a temptation 
which has been resisted with a clear grasp and a 
firm, intelligent hold of that which was before 
vague and conventional to him ; and he who meets 
a great sorrow with a feeble hold upon the essen¬ 
tial and eternal elements of life, and opens his heart 
to whatever teaching the new experience may have 
for him, comes forth with a new conception of his 
surroundings and his destiny. That which lay 
under the mists of partial knowledge is clearly re- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


41 


vealed and perfectly understood. The fires of trial 
have burned up the rank overgrowth of many a 
worldly career, the storms of affliction have cleared 
the air of many a selfish life, and out of the chaos 
of some awful crisis of personal experience a new 
heaven and a new earth have been born. 

Through every cloud some new light breaks in 
upon the soul, and after the storm has passed the 
pure heavens bend over a world that has grown 
clearer and larger while it was hidden under the 
darkness, which not less truly than the light is God’s 
messenger of truth and life. 

* 

* * 

The highest joy is an edelweiss; it grows only 
bosomed in the snow and nursed by tempests. 
There is no joy like divinely joyful sorrow, as 
there is no strength like the divinely strength¬ 
ened weakness. This is the paradox of Christian 
experience. 

* 

* * 

There is not a drop of martyr’s blood turned, in 
the marvelous alchemy of God’s spiritual horticul¬ 
ture, into a seed of the Church, not a life laid down 
by patriot hero on battle-field for liberty and native 
land, not a mother’s tears poured out in anguish 
for a child, in sorrow for the past, or fear for the 
future, not a heart-throb borne in Christly love for 
love’s sake and Christ’s—from the blood of the 
first martyr, which crying out from the ground 


42 


NEW STREAMS 


awakened Cain’s dead conscience, down to th& 
tear which God shall wipe away from the eyes of 
the latest comer to the everlasting Home — but 
that has its part in the perpetual sacrifice which 
the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth inaugurated, and 
which the same Christ, in the Church which is his 
body, is consummating through the Passion of the 
ages until the final resurrection morn shall come. 

* 

* * 

True! self-denial shall bring its reward; true! 
the cross shall bring the crown. But he who bears 
the cross only that he may get the crown, who 
denies himself to-day only that he may indulge 
himself in eternity, is acting only from a refined 
selfishness. The Christian counts the cost, but not 
the profit; he denies himself that he may win, not 
crowns, but crosses; that he may be found in 
Christ; that he may have his glory — the glory of 
the Crucified, the glory of a patient, suffering love. 
* 

* * 

Self-denial is not a price which man pays for the 
divine favor, nor an austerity by which he earns 
a divine reward. It is the necessity of spiritual 
growth; it is the requirement of such an adjust¬ 
ment of a compound nature as puts the spiritual 
above, and the animal and material beneath; that 
does this, not on special occasions and in special 
exigencies, but as the law and habit of the life. 
He that would follow Christ must learn to do what 


LV OLD CHANNELS. 


43 


Christ did in the wilderness —put the word of 
God above appetite, above approbativeness, above 
ambition. 

* 

* * 

Not on Sinai, but in Gethsemane and on Calvary 
does God become most clear and real and beautiful 
to us. The thunder and the tempest are his, the 
power and majesty of the visible creation are his; 
but the crown of divinity is self-sacrifice, the sub- 
limest revelation of Deity is service. 

* 

* * 

There is scarcely a title of honor woven into the 
crown which the New Testament puts on the brow 
of Christ that he does not weave into the lesser 
crown which he puts upon the brow of his dis¬ 
ciples. He is the Chief Shepherd, and every one 
that entereth in by the door is a shepherd of his 
sheep ; he is the Captain of Salvation, and we are 
soldiers of his cross; he is the Light that lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world, and we are 
lights of the world ; he is the Great High Priest, 
and we are priests unto God; he is the Lamb of 
God slain from the foundation of the world, and we 
are living sacrifices unto God ; he is King of kings 
and Lord of lords, and we are kings casting our 
crowns before him ; he is the only begotten Son 
of God; he is filled with all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily; and we are bid, as with bated 
breath and bowed head, to pray, that we, being 


44 


MEW STREAMS 


rooted and grounded in love, may know his love 
which passeth knowledge, and be tilled with all the 
fullness of God. The church is the body of Christ; 
our eyes are his eyes to see his visions, our hands 
his hands to do his work, our feet his feet to run 
his errands, our tongue his tongue to speak his 
truth ; and our hearts must needs be his heart, 
tilled with the fullness of his own presence. 

* 

* * 

The glory of the Christian Church is not in its 
cathedrals, but in its martyr tires. The glory of 
the nation is not in its palaces and its railroads, but 
in its Valley Forge and its Libby Prison. The 
glory of God is not in the light unapproachable in 
which he dwells, but in the Lamb slain from the 
foundation of the world; in this, that he ever has 
been the sin-bearer, the sufferer for the undeserv¬ 
ing, and will be to the end. 

* 

* * 

God leads us along dark and terrible ways, but 
he asks us to walk in no path along which he has 
not trodden himself, and in all our sorrows he gives 
to the open heart and the trustful spirit the peace 
which passeth all understanding. 

* 

* * 

Every disciple of Christ must be salted with fire. 
He must be purified by self-sacrifice, that he may 
have power to purify a selfish and self-indulgent 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


45 


world. If the salt have lost its saltness, where¬ 
with will ye season it ? If the Christian has lost 
the spirit of self-sacrifice, how shall he be saved 
himself or save others? The way of self-sacrifice 
is the highway to peace. 

* 

* * 

The Ten Commandments are social; the laws 
of the Sermon on the Mount are personal, indi¬ 
vidual, spiritual. 

Self-sacrificing love is the Christian ideal. It is 
not found in the Ten Commandments. The law 
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” is not 
Christ’s law of love ; it is his epitome of the law 
of justice. His law of love is deeper — the law of 
self-sacrifice. 

* 

* * 

Every disciple must carry a cross and follow 
Christ. He must help to fill up that which is lack¬ 
ing in Christ’s sufferings, till the great work of 
redemption is completed. 

* 

* *- 

There is no man that the plummet-line of God’s 
mercy does not reach. Our lines are very short 
and very little, but God’s line goes right down to 
the bottom. 

* 

* # 

Every man whose life is not helping on the life 
of self-sacrifice, every man whose object in the 
world is not to do something to lift the world’s 


46 


NEW STREAMS 


burden off its shoulders, every man who in this 
great campaign between self-sacrifice and selfish¬ 
ness is not enlisted on the side of self-sacrifice, is, 
by the inertia of his influence, if not by the aggres¬ 
sive activities of his life, against Christ. 

* 

* * 

Mercy is love looking toward the individual; 
justice is love looking toward the community; 
mercy is love considering the sinner ; justice is love 
considering the sinned against. A theology which 
denies or ignores either in so far denies or mis¬ 
represents the divine love. 

* 

* * 

All the experience of life would be unavailing if 
there was not within us a power to retain that ex¬ 
perience, and hold it in reserve, and use its accumu¬ 
lations in future time. We are stronger for what 
we have suffered only as there is power within us 
to remember the suffering. We are richer for 
having loved only because there is a memory within 
us that preserves that love. I am sorry for the 
man who, having had the joy of a pure love, seals 
up the page when the child or friend or wife is 
gone, and says, I will read that page no more. 
One may almost say that he who, having suffered, 
is not stronger, never really suffered, and he who, 
having loved, has no sweet memory of that love 
to cherish and maintain him, never really loved. 
When in the shades of the evening, out of the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


4? 


silent past the shadowy forms march in procession 
before us, and we embrace again those that we 
embraced, and kiss again those whom we kissed, 
and again hold with clasped hands those with 
whom we walked in sweet counsel, hand in hand, 
before, and the long-closed eyes open and look into 
ours, and we live the old love over, all that was en¬ 
riching our nature comes back to enrich our nature 
once again, and the lessons we have learned from 
life reteach us. 

* 

* * 


Experience is deeper than philosophy, and love 
than creed. 


There is no short and sudden way of becoming 
acquainted with Christ and entering into personal 
relationship with him. This experience *of know¬ 
ing Christ is the last and ripest fruit of Christian 
experience. It is gathered only in the autumn. 

* 

-* * 

The struggles of the greatest souls are typical of 
the struggles of all souls, and the manner in which 
the Infinite Love met their appeals for help is typi¬ 
cal of the manner in which the same divine com¬ 
passion meets our appeals. Long before the time 
when David looked up on the hills for his help God 
was sustaining and comforting and consoling the 
weak and the stricken and the crushed; but he 
was, and is, ministering to the world that leans on 


48 


NEW STREAMS 


him, not with the blindness of human tenderness, 
but with the large, clear eyes and far-sighted wis¬ 
dom of a love which discerns the end from the 
beginning. 

* 

* * 

In a very true sense, life is the very highest of the 
arts. There are efforts, ventures, achievements in 
human experience which transcend art; which, in¬ 
deed, art is always trying to reproduce. Ruth in 
tears amid the alien corn, Caesar falling at the feet 
of Pompey’s statue, Columbus facing a mutinous 
crew, a tumultuous sea, an unknown continent — 
where has art matched the sweetness, the tragedy, 
the sublime suspense of these moments of actual 
history ? 

* 

* * 

Experience of communion with God will not 
come on call. This song-bird which has cheered 
humanity in its darkest hours cannot be whistled 
to our window to sing us a song at our will. God 
is no banker on whom w T e can present a check and 
draw at sight. Sympathy is not bankable ; spirit¬ 
ual help is not a mercantile commodity to be paid 
over the counter. 

* 

* * 

We think of our Christ too much as we think of 
our dead heroes; as one w T ho has lived, has wrought 
a mighty w r ork, has left the world. We ought the 
rather constantly to think of him, not only as the 


in Old channels. 


49 


one who has done something for us, but as he who 
is now doing; not only as the one who has lived, 
but as he who is now living; not only as the one 
who has been in the world, but as he who is now 
in it just as utterly as when the dust of Palestine 
fell upon his blessed feet. We ought to think of 
him as a veritable, vital, vitalizing, personal pres¬ 
ence with us. 

* 

* * 

Christ was not the messenger of God, not a 
teacher sent from God; but God himself, in his 
own proper person, come down to earth in order 
that we might come in contact with him, and he 
might come in contact with us. 

* 

* * 

The director of an orchestra knows every instru¬ 
ment in it, perhaps, better than any one performer- 
If the orchestra plays ill he steps from the plat¬ 
form and takes the violin out of one of the per¬ 
former’s hands and plays perfectly the theme which 
the orchestra is to render; then he gives it back, 
goes to his place, raises his rod in hand, and calls 
for the rendition, and the orchestra breaks forth 
into the symphony. They are ill-trained; some of 
their instruments are out of tune, some of them 
are ignorant; they are imperfect, but they are 
working together under the trainer and leader to 
render from a hundred instruments what he ren¬ 
dered in one single melody upon one. And when 


50 


NEW STREAMS 


his work is clone, when he has trained them as he 
would train them, when he has put his own spirit, 
his own love, his own musical thought into their 
thoughts and their minds, there will rise from that 
orchestra a grander interpretation of the theme 
than the single instrument in the hands of the 
greatest genius could possibly give it. So Christ 
came to earth, and for one brief moment played 
the theme of God’s love; and so, from time to 
time, he calls from his orchestra, here one, there 
one, to render on a single instrument the theme 
that he would have us all learn. With instruments 
out of tune, and with minds that do not compre¬ 
hend, with hearts imperfectly trained and under¬ 
standings imperfectly furnished, we are all trying 
to render the great theme that he has given to us. 
When he lias wrought his training and accom¬ 
plished it, from the great orchestra that he gathers 
about his throne there will rise a better interpreta¬ 
tion of God’s love to man, and man’s love to God, 
than any man — than even Jesus of Nazareth himself 
— could, with a single life and single lips, interpret. 

* 

* * 

To be a Christian is not to believe something 
about Christ which the Church has taught; it is 
not to believe something which Christ himself has 
taught. It is by a vital and personal sympathy to 
be united to Christ; to live in him and by him. 
The soul has its food as well as the body; Christ 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


51 


is the soul’s food. We are Christians as we grow 
into his likeness by growing in his fellowship and 
companionship. We feed on Christ when we live 
under the direct, personal influence of his spiritual 
presence. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ did not come into the world to give 
some substitute for righteousness. He did not 
come into the world to tell us how we could get 
along Avithout righteousness. He came to make 
the path of practical righteousness plain. He 
came to put the inspiration into our lives that 
would enable us to lead righteous lives, to build 
up righteous character. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ came to put into the hearts of men 
the life of faith and hope and love, leaving that 
life to work itself out in industry, its forms of 
commerce, its forms of thought, its forms in the 
Church, its forms in society. He was a life-giver, 
he was not a reformer. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ is the center and heart of the Bible. 
All the Old Testament points to him; all the New 
Testament is derived from him; all the literature 
of the Bible is to be interpreted in harmony with 
his life, character and teachings; he is the sun; all 
prophets, patriarchs and apostles are planets who 
revolve about him. The law is a schoolmaster 


52 


NEW STREAMS 


which brings us to Christ; the history is a road 
which the nation traverses toward Christ; prophecy 
is a vision and anticipation of Christ; and all the 
Epistles are streams which have their source in 
Christ. 

* 

* * 

To follow Christ is not to imitate his actions, 
but to imbibe his spirit; and the structureless 
structure of his life happily gives us no alternative. 
It is not a model in which any life can be cast, and 
therefore it is an inspiration for all living. That 
life is equally an inspiration to all races and all 
nationalities. He belongs to no age, to no coun¬ 
try, to no race, and by and by we shall learn that 
he belongs to no religion. He belongs to humanity 
and to God. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ is often represented as having come 
to earth to found a church or establish a religion. 
This is not, however, the representation he makes 
of his own mission. He comes to bring light and 
life and salvation. He comes to impart to man¬ 
kind the divine life. Not merely to teach them 
the truth about God, not merely to open the way 
to them to forgiveness and peace, but to bring the 
life and light of God into the souls of men. What 
he did while he lived in the body he still does by 
his living influence — transforms character by im¬ 
parting his own character sympathetically to those 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


53 


that enter into sympathy with him. All other men 
after their death become but a memory; and as 
the memory grows more dim with the passage of 
time, their influence lessens. The name of the most 
influential is gradually blurred in men’s memories, 
as the names most deeply graven on the tombstone 
are gradually effaced by the work of time. But 
the name of Christ grows brighter and clearer, and 
the personal power of Christ more powerful, as the 
ages intervene which separate his cross from the 
living present. His power is personal. He is a 
living Presence. He was “raised for our justifica¬ 
tion.” He is not a sun that has set, but is still the 
Light of the world. He is not a life once lived but 
now gone; he is still the Light of the world. He 
is more than a counsel, he is a power; and it is 
power to do, far more than counsel to direct, that 
we all need. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ is God painted on the retina of 
humanity, God living a human life, God brought 
down to dimensions such that humanity can behold 
him. 

* 

* * 

Christ possessed a remarkable knowledge of men. 
And yet he never exhibited and never employed 
any wisdom in what I may call the science of 
human nature. He propounded no metaphysical 
theories, and he attacked none. He neither con¬ 
structed a system of his own nor criticised that of 


54 


NEW STREAMS 


others. He founded no school of either mental 
or moral science. He propounded no theories of 
society or government. Whatever theories of man 
or society underlaid his teaching, he never ex¬ 
pounded them; we are left to work them out for 
ourselves. Of the anatomy of man, whether physi¬ 
cal, mental or moral, he said absolutely nothing. 
He never discussed man as an object of curiosity. 
And yet it is said of him that he knew what was 
in man. He divined it. He lived in such close, 
vital sympathy with men-—living men, not the 
manikins of the class-room — that he saw — or 
should I rather say felt? — the profoundest secrets 
of their nature. He was one with men ; and the 
life currents which flowed in their veins quickened 
his own. His knowledge was a feminine knowl¬ 
edge, a mother-knowledge. He saw beneath the 
fair exterior of the Pharisee his hateful pride and 
self-conceit, and startled his auditors by denounc¬ 
ing the whited sepulcher, fair on the outside, and 
within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 
He discerned beneath the weedy exterior of the 
publicans and sinners the seeds of repentance and 
of virtue, and shone on them with hope and love 
until they blossomed out into life. 

* 

* * 

There was a play in Christ’s life, a hiding and 
revealing of himself, a certain sense of humor, a 
flexibility of nature, a responsiveness, a desire to 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


55 


draw men out of themselves, and a rare tact and 
skill in doing it — a desire again to be drawn him¬ 
self to men by the enticements of love, of which 
in our conventional study of the New Testament 
we make, it seems to me, far too little account. 
As a mother coming into the room where her chil¬ 
dren are at play waits and hides herself and looks 
on, not spying them out with suspiciousness as a 
police officer, but in her love keenly enjoying the 
revealing of their childhood to her in their total 
unconsciousness of her presence, or as she takes 
the child in her lap and becomes a pupil, and ques¬ 
tions as though she were ignorant, that by the hid¬ 
ing of her own knowledge she may see the play of 
her child’s power, and bring the child’s nature from 
its depths to the surface, so Christ was accustomed 
often to act with his disciples. 

* 

* * 

In a true sense God is forever manifesting him¬ 
self in human lives. But these lives are only sin¬ 
gle colors; in Jesus Christ all the colors of the 
spectrum are woven together into a single perfect 
ray. In others they are maimed and broken by 
the human atmosphere through which they are 
reflected ; in him they are clear as when they first 
issued from the sun. 

* 

* * 

Christ’s teachings show in him a rare insight into 
the life of nature; but his knowledge of nature was 


56 


NEW STREAMS 


sympathetic, not scientific. In saying his knowl¬ 
edge, I mean the knowledge which he used ; of 
knowledge which he possessed, but did not use, I 
know nothing, and say nothing. He made no 
scientific explanations. He elucidated no merely 
physical laws, and added nothing to physical in¬ 
ventions. He did not rival Marco Polo in geo¬ 
graphical discovery; nor Newton in ascertaining 
and revealing the law which binds the universe in 
an eternal harmony ; nor Watts, or Stephenson, or 
Edison, in adding new forces to the world’s physi¬ 
cal equipment. Of nature as a piece of mechanism 
he never spoke. But of nature as a book his heart 
was full. Its hieroglyphics were all plain to him. 
The same spirit which looked out through David’s 
eyes upon the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, 
looked out through the eyes of Christ upon the 
birds, the messengers of his gracious care, and the 
seed, the symbol of his germinating truth. God 
teaches his children by object lessons. Christ had 
the wisdom to discern and interpret the lessons. 
There is a nature-knowledge of Newton and La¬ 
place ; there is a nature-knowledge of Wordsworth 
and Burroughs. The nature-knowledge which 
Christ used was of the latter type. He saw a soul 
looking through the eyes of Nature, and read the 
divine love in the divine glance. He never anato¬ 
mized the body of Nature ; he lived in communion 
with her spirit. And this is a nature-knowledge 
within the capacity of all men. All children have 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


57 


it in some measure ; they lose it as they grow 
older, and more practical and less wise. This was 
the wisdom which was set up from everlasting, 
from the beginning, before the earth was. It wrote 
into nature truth ; and he who possesses something 
of this wisdom possesses the power to read that 
truth which in the hour of creation the Divine 
Wisdom embodied in his Creation. 

* 

* * 

The Christian character is like an opal; from the 
hidden fire within gleams out a light which changes 
in its flashing colors with every change of aspect 
which it presents, with every point of view from 
which it is looked at. The heart of the opal is 
love; the flashing lights which proceed from it are 
many. 

* 

* * 

The man who thinks he can build up Christ-like- 
ness in himself without Christ’s help, the man who 
thinks that he can fight for Christ without fighting 
with Christ, has failed to count the cost, and his 
building will end in a ruin and his campaign in an 
embassage to the world, the flesh, and the devil for 
terms of peace. 

* 

* * 

The laws of the sunbeam are the laws of the sun 
because the sunbeam comes from the sun, bringing 
the laws of the sun and the nature of the sun, that 
it may warm and vivify the earth. And the laws 


58 


NEW STREAMS 


of my nature are the laws of God’s own nature be¬ 
cause I come from God, have God’s nature written 
in my members, and am a child of God, possessing 
my Father’s nature. 

* 

* * 

There is not a weakness that cannot be made a 
strength ; there is not a poverty that cannot be 
made a wealth; there is not a hindrance that can¬ 
not be made an inspiration. The sun is kept alive 
by the matter which it cast into the sun but not 
destroyed, and out of that blazing orb, that gathers 
into itself all the matter that comes within its 
reach, there issue forth the rays of light that vivify 
and illumine the earth. God takes our very vices 
and out of them makes radiance and light and 
warmth-giving. 

* 

* * 

God never acts without reason ; but he very 
often refuses to give one. He chooses his own 
instruments for his work. He gives no account of 
the principal upon which he proceeds in their selec¬ 
tion. The battle of life is not a guerrilla warfare. 
It is a divinely ordered campaign. God selects his 
soldiers as he will. His tests of character are cer¬ 
tainly widely different from our own, often quite 
incomprehensible to us. 

* 

* * 

Who are the men whom we most deeply honor, 
whose lives are a continual rebuke to our faults and 
a continual stimulus to our best aspirations ? They 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


59 


are the men whom Christianity has most power¬ 
fully influenced. There is no virtue that has not a 
place in Christian morality. There is no grace 
that does not belong to the Christian character. 
There is no act of self-sacrifice and heroism that is 
not essentially Christian. 

* 

* * 

Character is always and of itself its own authen¬ 
tication. We may believe about a man for rea¬ 
sons ; we believe in him only for what he is to us. 
* 

* * 

There is nothing worth so much as character; 
and nothing that costs so much. There is nothing 
so difficult to attain ; and yet it is within the attain¬ 
ment of every one. 

* 

* * 

The greatest and best of all gifts is that which 
we unconsciously bestow, the most terrible of all 
burdens is that which we unconsciously impose. 
We barter qualities with one another. The com¬ 
merce in character transcends all other commerce. 
It is continuous and ceaseless, broken in upon only 
by sleep. All methods of expression are only the 
instruments of exchange, the coin in the spiritual 
realm by which we carry this commerce on. 

* 

* -* 

Character building cannot be carried on without 
suffering. Pain is the great peacemaker, and pain 
is the great purifier. One soul cannot purify an- 


60 


NEW STREAMS 


other until it knows that other’s sin, and it cannot 
know that other’s sin without feeling the full bur¬ 
den of it. An unsuffering hero cannot save a sin¬ 
ful nation, nor an unsuffering teacher a sinful 
pupil, nor an unsuffering mother a sinful child, nor 
an unsuffering God a sinful race. 

* 

* * 

Belief and feeling both help in character build¬ 
ing ; but neither is character building. Building 
on Jesus Christ is only to be done by obeying him. 
* 

-* * 

An act often repeated becomes a habit. A habit 
long continued becomes a second nature. Only in 
that way can character be built; by acts so long 
repeated that they become a habit, and by habit so 
long continued that it becomes a second nature. 

* 

* * 

We are not writing in the sand. The tide does 
not wash it out. We are not painting our pictures 
on the canvas, and with a brush, so that we can 
erase the error of yesterday, or overlay it with an¬ 
other color to-day. We are writing our lives with 
a chisel on the marble, and every time we strike a 
blow we leave a mark that is indelible. 

* 

* * 

Yes, we say it is a terrible thing for a man to be 
bound hand and foot by vicious habits. But did 
it never occur to you that the law of habit is just 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


61 


as strong for virtue as it is for vice ? If profan¬ 
ity may become a habit, reverence may become 
a habit. If self-indulgence may become a habit, 
temperance may become a habit. If greed may 
become a habit, giving may become a habit. . . . 
There is no way in which a man can build himself 
except by the process of habit. 

# 

* * 

Character is not a product of heredity — it is 
not born of blood ; nor of law and teaching — it 
is not born of the will of the flesh; nor of a reso¬ 
lute purpose — it is not self-made; it is not born 
of the will of man. True character is born of God. 

* 

* * 

The trial of every character ends when the 
character is fully tried. We pass the line we 
know not when. It is invisible to every eye but 
God’s. 

* 

* * 

A Christian is a follower of Christ, a disciple of 
Christ. You may transpose the sentence: every 
follower, every disciple of Christ is a Christian. 
To become a Christian nothing is necessary but to 
take up life with the resolve to seek first, and at 
every cost, a character pure, good, true, heroic, 
after the pattern of the purity, the goodness, the 
truth, the heroism of Jesus Christ. This neither 
requires nor permits any time for consideration. 
It requires no more time for a man to decide 


62 


NEW STBEAMS 


whether he will endeavor to imitate the character 
of Christ than it does for a thief to decide whether 
he will begin to be honest. 

■fc 

* * 

Educational methods which leave out of account 
the development of the will or, in other words, 
of the character, and which seek simply or prima¬ 
rily the acquisition of facts, produce many smart 
men, but very few able ones, and give us a type of 
character altogether too frequent in this country; 
efficient in mere material matters, helpless in the 
presence of those greater and deeper problems 
which demand heroic patience of investigation, 
lofty devotion to the highest ends, and that kind 
of character which can wait for great results. 

* 

* * 

That which is true of material things is equally 
true of human faculties. There is not one single 
faculty or power in the human soul that has not 
its right function, and to be a Christian is not to 
cut it off, but to learn how to use it. 

* 

* * 

If every apology were destroyed, if no volume 
of evidences were ever again written, the cause of 
Christ would suffer no harm. If the church only 
understood this, and would put into faithful service 
the thought and strength it now gives to defending 
itself against supposed foes, the world would gain 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


63 


immensely in the vigor and impressiveness with 
which the truth would reveal itself in human lives. 
The unfaithful Christian is a far more dangerous 
foe than Celsus or Strauss or Herbert Spencer. 
The traitor who delivered Christ into the hands 
of his enemies was no unbelieving Jew, no scoffing 
Roman, but one of the twelve, and Christian his¬ 
tory is forever repeating the typical treachery. 
To the doubting Thomas the Master showed the 
wounds in his hands and his side, but upon the 
scrupulous Pharisee whose lips declared him a 
believer in God, while his life proclaimed him an 
infidel, his words of denunciation fell like lightning. 
* 

* * 

To follow Christ is to be a Christian; it is not 
necessary to have overtaken him. Here we grow 
toward Christ-likeness; when we awake and see 
him as he is, then, and not till then, shall we be 
truly like him. 

* 

* * 

The mission of the Christian Church; the mission 
of the individual Christian, not merely to teach a 
system of truth, not merely to set a good example, 
but to put forth a divine power; to be a reservoir 
of righteousness, to be a light to the world — not 
a sun, but a planet, shining by reflected light — to 
impart new life, to confer new power, to make 
others shine, to cast the devil out from men. Life 
is more than teaching; more than example. Power 


64 


NEW STREAMS 


is more than doctrine. As every branch must be 
grafted on the Vine, so in turn on every branch 
some twig must be engrafted. If you have no 
power to make men better — more gentle, more 
meek, more courageous, more pure, more unselfish 
— the fault is with yourself. You are not what 
you might be, what you should be, what God calls 
you to be. 

* 

* * 

Carry out the impulses that God puts into your 
heart to-day, and out of that carrying out there 
shall issue a larger and diviner impulse to-morrow. 

* 

* * 

It is a perfectly simple thing to begin a Christian 
life. Do the thing that God calls you to do to-day. 
It is a perfectly simple thing to grow in Christian 
life: Do day by day the duty God calls you to 
day by day. 

* 

* * 

No truth is essential to the beginning of salva¬ 
tion, that is, to a start after character ; no truth — 
nothing but a desire God-ward. 

* 

* * 

There is many a man who desires communion 
with Christ and knows not how to get it, who, 
when he got home and found his wife tired and 
the baby cross, if he would attempt to relieve her, 
would find that a good way to go to Christ. There 
is many a man who longs for more fellowship with 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


65 


Christ, who, if lie met a poor woman at the well- 
side, who wanted instruction, and did for her what 
Christ did for the woman at the well, would find 
Christ. 

* 

* * 

There is a revelation of Christ in the human ex¬ 
perience of those that love and are endeavoring to 
follow him. The very best Christian is but a poor 
exemplification of Christ; but he is better than 
nothing. 

* 

#• * 

The child of God is no lost child. He is with 
his Father. He knows whence he came, for he 
came forth from his Father; he knows where he 
is, for he is with his Father; he knows whither he is 
going, for he is going to his Father’s home ; he 
knows what is expected of him, for it is expected 
of him only that he will be a loving, trusting son 
of a loving, life-giving father; he knows who is 
the Master of his destiny, for his past, his present, 
and his future are in his Father’s hands. And his 
Father has chosen him to be conformed to the im¬ 
age of Christ his Lord ; to this has called him ; for 
this has reclaimed him; and into this glorious 
perfection will bring him, even him, at last. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is the casket which contains the im¬ 
age of my Lord — that is enough ; whether it be 
lead or silver or gold is a matter of minor concern. 


66 


NEW S THEA MS 


The Bible is like a rich country; part of its 
riches, like the wheat and corn, grows from the 
soil, and is apparent to every passer-by; part of it 
is, like the gold and the iron, hidden beneath the 
surface, and must be dug for like concealed treasure. 
* 

* * 

Pagan literature has prayers; only Christian 
literature has songs of infinite peace. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is like a great symphony played by 
some magnificent orchestra, in which the same 
theme is taken up by one instrument after another, 
and repeated with endless variation and with ever- 
increasing beauty and power. This theme is the 
good news that God loves men in spite of their un¬ 
lovableness, and is working through the ages to 
save them through their sorrows from their sins. 
Like the single note of an early bird before the 
dawn sounds this Gospel in the sorrowful story of 
man’s first sin ; like a strain of music in a network 
of harmony, it is hidden in the elaborate ritual of 
the Levitical law. This is the melody which makes 
the Psalms of David the world’s reservoir of song 
and David the world’s sweet singer. This is the 
ray of light in Jeremiah and the flood of light in 
Isaiah ; this is the eloquence of Christ, the wisdom 
of Paul, the sweetness and light of John; and 
finalty this theme, which has been taken up as a 
solo by one instrument after another from Moses 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


67 


to J ohn, becomes at the end of the ages a choral in 
which the whole orchestra unites in the great cres¬ 
cendo : “And I heard the voice of many angels 
round about the throne and the beasts and the eld¬ 
ers : and the number of them was ten thousand 
times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, 
saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb 
that was slain, to receive power and riches and 
wisdom and strength and honor and glory and 
blessing.” We have a Gospel according to Moses, 
and according to David, and according to every 
one of the prophets, as well as according to Mat¬ 
thew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Peter. 

* 

* * 

The oxygen is mixed with the nitrogen in order 
that it may the better be breathed, and the better 
minister to human life. And in the Bible the di¬ 
vine is mingled — inextricably and indivisibly min¬ 
gled — with the human, that humanity may receive 
it and be ministered to by it. . . 

The Bible is a more sacred book because it is 
human. 

* 

* * 

There is some poetry, as there is some music, 
that is uninterpretable. One of Beethoven’s sym¬ 
phonies cannot be translated into language or ren¬ 
dered in a picture. If it means nothing to the soul 
as music, it cannot be explained in words or by 
canvas. So there are some of Tennyson’s poems 


68 


NEW STREAMS 


that defy analysis. The attempt to explain them 
is like the attempt to explain the beauty of a flower 
to one who does not see it. To some extent this 
is true of the book of Revelation. It is a prophetic 
symphony, an uninterpretable poem. It speaks to 
the imagination ; and if the imagination gets no 
solemn warning or jubilant hope from the pano¬ 
rama of history, as it is there unrolled, the reason 
will not get it from a prosaic commentary. 

* 

* * 

The books of prophecy are picture galleries: 
they are musical symphonies ; they are now the 
forebodings and now the aspirations of the soul 
when enkindled by God’s presence. They are not 
definite ; they are the more eloquent because vague. 
* 

* * 

You remember the scene in Shakspere’s “Mer, 
chant of Venice ' when the suitors for Portia’s 
hand choose between the caskets —the golden, the 
silver, the leaden. The value is not in the casket, 
it is in the portrait of Portia that lies within, and 
he who finds the portrait wins the living bride. 
The value of our Bible is not in its words and 
phrases — these are the mere caskets ; it is in the 
Christ whose portrait is contained in the whole 
Book, from the opening scene in the Garden to 
the closing scene at the Judgment. And he best 
uses the Bible who knows how to open this casket, 
to look beneath its words and phrases, to see the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


69 


Christ whose image is enshrined there, and then to 
look up and see the living Christ at his side and 
take him as a Friend and a Bridegroom because he 
has found this divine image in the Book. 

* 

* * 

There are some passages of Scripture that seem 
to me best interpretable by music. Phil, ii., 5-11 
is one ; Isaiah, chap, liii., is another. I wonder that 
no Beethoven or Schumann has attempted to tell 
the story of the Gospel by means of an orchestra. 

# 

# # 

Any interpretation which makes the Bible seem 
less to us than it was before we may instantly re¬ 
ject ; but any interpretation which suggests to us 
in its teaching a profounder and a more spiritual 
truth may be true, and is certainly not to be re¬ 
jected merely because it has never before been 
received. We are not to be like the Athenians, 
always searching for some new thing; nor like the 
Pharisees, ready to stone the first Stephen who 
offers us a new interpretation of the word of God ; 
but like the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures 
to see whether these things were so or not. 

* 

* * 

The New Testament is not a strait jacket, to 
which an insane man must submit himself lest he 
tear himself or others. It is not a chain to fasten 
a fierce dog to his kennel. It is not a system of 


70 


NEW STREAMS 


monastic regulations to which every disciple must 
submit or bear the pains and penalties to be in¬ 
flicted by the Superior. It is not even a text-book 
in which a soldier is to learn a military drill. It is 
a seed, and only a seed. It is to give him who re¬ 
ceives it germinant ideas which must sprout and 
grow to their own maturity in his own thinking; 
spiritual impulses to quicken in him new lines of 
life, which he must learn to follow out wisely for 
himself. 

* 

* * 

Theology is progressive. Traditionalism is not 
the test of truth. What the church has held in 
the past is not conclusive. Christian rabbis as well 
as Jewish rabbis may make a mistake. The read¬ 
ing of the Bible which has prevailed even for cen¬ 
turies does not exclude us from a profounder and 
a better reading. It cannot indeed be all wrong; 
the Jews were not mistaken in looking for a Mes¬ 
siah. But it may be shallow and superficial; the 
Jews were mistaken in the kind of Messiah they 
were looking for. We cannot be mistaken in be¬ 
lieving that Jesus Christ has come into the world 
to save sinners ; but we may be mistaken in the 
limitations which we have put upon his salvation 
and the definitions which we have afforded of it. 

* 

* * 

We are in this life like one following a narrow 
pathway in a thick woods, the extent and limits of 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


71 


which are utterly unknown to him. He may make 
little excursions on the one side or the other, hut if 
he attempts to leave the plain path in order to 
make a topographical map of the whole forest, he 
becomes inevitably and inextricably lost in its 
depths. We are such atoms on this globe of ours, 
and our lives are such mere seconds as compared 
with eternity, that it is utterly out of the question 
for us to comprehend the mysteries of the uni¬ 
verse ; and the Bible is not given to us for any 
such purpose. It is given to help us live patient, 
self-denying, loving, godly lives. When we turn 
aside from this narrow pathway to solve the prob¬ 
lems of God’s government, we are very apt to 
become hopelessly entangled in mystery, and, by 
continually thinking over themes too great for 
our solution, to grow spiritually and intellectually 
morbid. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is no book of dictation by a passion¬ 
less God to passive amanuenses, but the record of 
the spiritual perceptions of God’s most spiritual 
children, when his sympathetic soul had entered 
and filled their souls with its own life-tide. 

* 

The New Testament is a prophetic volume; a 
book of anticipations. It also has forelooking eyes ; 
its prow is also set toward a golden shore ; its light 
is also a light of hope. The coming of the Cruci- 


72 


NEW STREAMS 


fied One is not all the children of God have to 
hope for; nor is the coming of the invisible, uni¬ 
versal Spirit God’s last gift to man. There lies 
something yet beyond. There is “ more to follow.” 
Christ is in the New Testament, as in the Old Tes¬ 
tament, still a Coming One. The summer prophe¬ 
sies the ripened fruits of an autumn harvest, as the 
spring promises the opened glory of the flowering 
summer. 

* 

* * 

It is not what a man thinks about the Bible that 
shows whether he is spiritual or not, but whether 
in the Bible he discerns a note that stirs his own 
heart to revere, to lov$, to hope. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is not a book, but a collection of 
books, written by different authors, ages apart, 
without conference with each other, or a common 
conscious purpose; it is also true that a common 
unity binds these books together in the one Book; 
and that bond which unites them is a historical 
unity. Containing books of law, of history, of 
poetry, of fiction, and of philosophy, it is neverthe¬ 
less true that in its essence the Bible is a book of 
history — the history of redemption. It begins 
with the fall of man in the Garden; it ends with 
the redemption of man seen in the Apocalyptic 
vision. It traces the development of humanity 
from its cradle by the side of the Euphrates to the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


73 


final consummation of its manhood as the adopted 
sons of God. Use this key, and the whole Bible 
becomes intelligible. Lose this key, and the whole 
Bible becomes a mere jumble of literary fragments 
— queer, quaint narratives; statutes sometimes sig¬ 
nificant, sometimes obsolete and unmeaning; ethi¬ 
cal aphorisms sometimes pure, sometimes alloyed ; 
spiritual intuitions which sometimes seem to dis¬ 
close and sometimes to hide the truth. To the one 
student the Bible is a rare mosaic, all its parts 
grouped about the one center-piece, the life and 
death of Christ; to the other it is a mere pile of 
precious stones, heaped together without purpose 
and without meaning. He can admire single 
stones; but he can see no picture. 

* 

* * 

The questions who wrote the Pentateuch and 
who the Gospels are not unimportant; but they 
are literary, not religious. The question whether 
the Bible is inspired, and in what sense, is of very 
great importance ; but it is theological, not reli¬ 
gious. A man may begin a Christian life without 
having any knowledge of either question. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is the product of character, and is 
to be studied for its effect on character. Its end 
is not information, but character-building. The 
watchwords of its student should be Obedience, 
Trust, Faith, and Fellowship. He who studies in 


74 


NEW STREAMS 


it in this spirit and to these ends will not fail to 
find its inspiration attested by its fruitfulness. He 
who searches in it for a perfect psychology of man 
or a perfect philosophy of life will come away from 
it disappointed; but not he who seeks in it im¬ 
pulses to the obedience of a free spirit, the restful- 
ness of a trusting one, the joy of a believing one, 
and the fellowship of a loving one. 

* 

* * 

The Higher Criticism is a best friend of Chris¬ 
tian life and experience. It should be heated as 
a fire only by those who believe that ignorance is 
the mother of devotion. 

* * 

The value of the fruit tree is in its fruit, not in 
its bark or fibrous structure ; and the value of the 
Bible is in its spiritual experience, not in its literary 
form. 

* 

* * 

The Bible is like a symphony, weaving endless 
variations around one simple theme, which, obscure 
at first, grows stronger and clearer, until finally 
the whole orchestra takes it up in one magnifi¬ 
cent choral, conquering all obstacles and breaking 
through all hidings. 

* 

* * 

Systems may be deduced from the Bible, but no 
system is in the Bible. Men make their systems 
out of the material in the Bible, as they make bot- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


75 


anies out of the phenomena of flowers, or villages 
out of the trees of the forest. Systems are man¬ 
made. That fact is nothing against them ; but it 
is the fact. They are not divine in origin or 
divine in authority. 

* 

* * 

The God of Puritanism, like the God of Brah- 
minism, is an impassive God. Only an impassive 
God could unconditionally elect some of the human 
race to eternal sin and suffering, or look with com¬ 
placency upon their wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
The Church of Christ to-day is growing toward a 
more honorable and a more reverent conception of 
God as a God of long-suffering. The utilitarianism 
which conceives the object of virtue to be happi¬ 
ness, the selfishness which can conceive of the 
highest bliss only as painless bliss, is giving way to 
a profounder conception of life — one which sees 
in virtue a prize greater than happiness, and in 
suffering love a bliss higher than that of a pain¬ 
less self-satisfaction. 

# 

* * 

Sometimes from my hill-side home among the 
Highlands of the Hudson I see, fifty miles away, 
obscured by haze and overhanging clouds, and 
partially veiled, perhaps, in mist or rain, the distant 
outline of the Catskill range ; and then the veil is 
drawn aside, the turbaned mist is lifted off their 
foreheads and that which before was dim and in- 


76 


NEW STREAMS 


distinct stands out against the dark background of 
sky in clear, intelligible outline, yet leaving all the 
dress of gray rock and green tree and foaming 
cataract, and dark gloom, and flitting sunshine 
breaking through the trees, to the imagination; for 
at best it is only an outline I can see. So in the 
Old Testament I look upon the outline of my God 
veiled in cloud ; in the New Testament the cloud 
is lifted, the mist is cleared away, and through an 
atmosphere like that of the most perfect October 
day I look on the same outline, distinct and beau¬ 
tiful against a heavenly background ; and still it is 
but an outline that I see of the mystery and ma¬ 
jesty of the nature I shall never know, never be 
able even to explore until I stand in His presence 
and am invited to know Him even as I am known. 
* 

* # 

Christian life is a perpetually growing, but never 
consummated, incarnation. If Jesus Christ was 
manifested to show men what God is, he was also 
manifested to show them what they might become. 
God is no meteor that flashed on the world and 
then disappeared, leaving it to darkness and the 
memory of a great light. He is the Sun; the 
Light that lighteth every man. 

* 

# * 

Human experience of divine goodness is so large 
that no analogy of human love is adequate to 
interpret it. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


77 


God’s rewards are always vastly out of propor¬ 
tion to our service or merit. 

* 

* * 

The gifts of God are without measure. He 
blesses infinitely. The cup of cold water does not 
lose its reward ; but the reward is proportioned by 
the greatness of the Giver, not by the greatness of 
the service which has been rendered to Him. 
There is not a thought of love, not a spontaneous 
free-will offering of affection, though it comes to 
naught in act, which He forgets. And his treas¬ 
ure house of love as his remembrance is unfailing 
and infinite. “ In this life an hundred-fold ; and in 
the world to come eternal life.” 

# 

* # 

The essential principles upon which Christ by 
his sufferings saves the race differ in no wise from 
the principles upon which every true father saves 
his son from sin by his suffering. 

# 

* * 

God possesses a character such that he is forever 
going out of himself, like the shepherd after the lost 
sheep, that he may pour his own life-currents into 
every willing, wistful child. 

* 

# * 

The burden-bearer and the sin-bearer stands in 
the family of God nearest the world’s Burden- 
bearer and Sin-bearer. Blessed is he who by his 


78 


NEW STREAMS 


physical ministrations can take from men their 
hunger and nakedness, and help them to food and 
raiment; blessed he whose skill enables him to 
succor men in sickness and redeem them from 
death ; blessed he who can enlighten their igno¬ 
rance and emancipate them from folly and super¬ 
stition ; but, most of all, blessed is he whom God 
counts strong enough and faithful enough to be 1 
come a burden-bearer and a sin-bearer for others ; 
even for those who sleep while he prays, or who 
revile while he patiently and silently suffers. 

* 

* # 

The suffering of Christ was not an episode, en¬ 
dured for a lifetime, for a purpose. That suffering 
discloses to us the eternal nature of God as the 
Sin-bearer. The Lamb of God was slain from the 
foundation of the world, and will be slain till the end 
of sin. And the soul is saved, not by the manifes¬ 
tation, but by the suffering. 

* 

* * 

The Benedicite is learned only in the fiery fur¬ 
nace : blessed is he who has learned it. 

* 

* * 

He that bears with divine patience a heavy bur¬ 
den shows every witnessing soul how lighter bur¬ 
dens may be borne. The most sacred of all 
ordinations is the ordination of sorrow; the most 
glorious of all offices is the office of burden-bearer. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


79 


God is laying on you what he laid on his well-be¬ 
loved Son ; he is honoring you as he honored his 
well-beloved Son. The burden which Christ bore 
for the whole world you are bearing for your little 
world. The cross which Christ has laid down you 
have taken up. 

* 

* * 

God is a suffering God. Love is a suffering 
love; for there is and can be no true love that 
does not suffer so long as loved ones sin. 


There is no love which does not possess the ca¬ 
pacity of suffering, and no heart of love which 
would not cry out against the cruel sentence which 
should deprive it of its power of suffering. Tears 
are blessed, and unwet eyes are of all eyes the 
most pitiful. 

* 

* * 

The restoration of the sinful soul to itself and 
the reconciliation of the estranged soul to its Father 
can be accomplished only by suffering. The soul 
that has sinned must suffer for itself — this is re¬ 
pentance; the Redeemer must suffer for it — this 
is atonement. The Redeemer must realize the sin 
of the sinner, enter into it, appreciate it, feel 
the shame and disgrace, the poignancy and bitter¬ 
ness of it, in order to lift the sinner out of his sin. 
As justification is the divine pole and faith the 
human pole, so atonement is the divine pole and 


80 


NEW STREAMS 


repentance the human pole. When these poles are 
joined, the electric current is complete, and divine 
life flows into the human from the divine soul. 
Then it is justified. 

* * 

There are not three Gods mysteriously joined in 
one God. There is one God, only one God. . . . 

One God speaking to men, now through the voice 
of nature, now through the voice of history, now 
through the voice of experience, knocking at the 
heart of every soul and at every door of every soul; 
now seeking to come in through the door of your 
intellect, now seeking to enter in through the door 
of your affections, and now seeking to enter in 
through the obedience of your will to his voice, in¬ 
terpreting him through your conscience and calling 
you even higher and higher. 

God and man are bound together by this triple 
cord, through this triple revelation and triple vis¬ 
ion, through knowledge, through love, and through 
obedience and intertwined life. 

* 

* * 

Incarnation is the indwelling of God in a unique 
man, in order that all men may come to be at one 
with God. 

* 

* * 

We reject the ancient definition of Christ as 
God and man because it left us without a clear 
knowledge who God is or what man is. We 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


81 


believe that Jesus Christ is God in man ; God in¬ 
terpreting himself to humanity in the terms of a 
perfect human experience; perfect man and per¬ 
fect God, because no man can be perfect unless 
God be in him, and because God can be revealed to 
men only by entering into man. But we also be¬ 
lieve that Jesus Christ is the door; that God en¬ 
tered into that one life that he might enter all 
lives; that the incarnation is continuous and pro¬ 
gressive ; and that it will not be complete until 
Paul’s inspired prayer is answered and we are all 
filled with all the fullness of God. 

* 

* * 

The atonement is no expiation to induce God to 
love, no “ plan” to enable him to forgive, but the 
revelation in time of his eternal suffering love. 

* 

* * 

The non-church goers are out of line with the 
noblest life of the past; they have broken ranks 
with the loftiest souls in history; they have sepa¬ 
rated themselves from the historic development of 
humanity. 

* 

* * 

Atonement is the bringing of God and man to¬ 
gether, uniting them, not as a river is united with 
the sea, losing its personality therein, but as the 
child is united with the father or the wife with the 
husband, whose personality and individuality are 
strengthened and increased by the union. 


82 


NEW STREAMS 


Words are incarnate thoughts. The poet exists 
in his poem, the artist in his picture, the orator in 
his speech ; and yet the orator is more than his 
speech, the artist is more than his picture, the poet 
is more than his poem. So God exists in his crea¬ 
tion and yet is more than his creation ; God exists 
in humanity and yet is more than humanity. In 
physical nature God has given expression to liis 
power, his wisdom, his skill, his love of beauty. 
But has he given no expression to his higher self 
— to his righteousness, his truth, his purity, his 
love ? . . . Yes ! in Christ Jesus — Son of 

man and Son of God. God perfectly manifested 
in perfect man. 

* 

* * 

Christ is a model preacher, and the burden of 
Christ’s message is not You must, but You can. 

* 

* * 

We look across the centuries and we see in this 
man of Bethlehem and Nazareth the ideal man ; 
and we see in him the revelation of God to man. 
But he is more than an ideal man, and he is more 
than a revealed God. He is God revealed in man. 
And the message of his life is this: that God and 
man are not set apart by a great unfathomable, 
immeasurable gulf; that the true God is in hu¬ 
manity and making humanity divine. Shine with 
resplendent glory, little drop of water! and the 
little drop of water says, “ I ? I have no glory 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


83 


in me; I cannot shine like the sun or the stars.” 
Yes, little drop of water, look up! and spanning 
the heavens is the rainbow which the sun has made 
out of little drops of water like yourself. Now 
join with other drops of water that gather in the 
heavens, and when the sun shines through you all 
the glories of color shall resplendently radiate 
themselves from your combined presence. You 
cannot be divine. But come, take my hand, and 
take his hand ; we shall join ourselves together, 
and then look back across the centuries, and see 
what God’s indwelling has made of humanity in 
one divine ideal man, and know that when he has 
completed his work, all the glory that there was in 
that one short single life shall resplendently fill the 
heavens with the glory of a redeemed and glorified, 
because a divinely illumined humanity. 

* 

* * 

This was always Christ’s way; he met men on 
their own ground, and compelled their own con¬ 
science to condemn them. As Socrates compelled 
his disciples to argue out philosophic truth for 
themselves, so Christ compelled his inquirers to 
ascertain moral truth for themselves. His method 
was the Socratic method applied to morals. 

* 

* * 

Christ, as an artist-teacher, indicates the outline 
of the Church’s life by his own brief three years; 
dots it, as it were, upon the canvas; and then 


84 


NEW STREAMS 


leaves the church to fill up, through the ages of 
teaching, living, and suffering, the outline his brief 
life has indicated. 

* 

* * 

Christ is in all his teaching a radical; that is a 
root teacher. 

* 

* * 

Sorrow was his coronation, and he could not 
have been Saviour if he had not been sufferer. 

* 

* * 

The modern church is not a recruiting office; it 
is a school. The modern pastor is not a preacher 
of the Gospel. A preacher is a herald; the Gos¬ 
pel is good news. The modern preacher is not a 
herald of news. The missionary is ; the Evangel¬ 
ist may be; the settled pastor is not. He is a 
teacher of Christian ethics and Christian doctrine to 
a community of Christian households. lie has as 
little reason to be discouraged if his school does 
not grow bigger, as to be elated if it does. A 
school is to be tested not by increase of its num¬ 
bers, but by increase of wisdom; not by its roll, 
but by its recitations. 

* 

* * 

The Church of Christ is a spirit, not a body; a 
life, not a form ; a brotherhood, not an order ; a 
worship, not a ritual; a service, not a hierarchy ; 
a faith, not a creed; and whatever the body, 
form, order, ritual, hierarchy, or creed, that church 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


85 


is most truly apostolic which has most of that 
spirit of godliness and brotherly kindness; that 
life of faith and hope and love, which was the 
power and the beauty of the churches that were 
born on the day of Pentecost and were nursed by 
Apostolic hands. 

* 

* * 

It is true that the Church has often resisted pro¬ 
gress, sometimes with fire and sword ; but it has 
itself furnished the antidotes to its own deathly 
content. The victors over its own torpor have 
been its own children. Paul was a Jewish Rabbi 
and Luther a Roman Catholic monk. 

* 

* * 

A church has no moral right to be behind the 
times. 

* 

* * 

Only the ignorant and the low-minded sneer at 
churches; to all others the mere act of worship, 
however imperfect and inadequate, is a sacred 
thing. Along this avenue of visible adoration of 
the unseen God all the highest and holiest have 
walked; forth from these shrines men and women 
have gone to all the glorious martyrdoms ; out of 
this worship have come those restraining forces 
which have held back the baser passions, and those 
commanding aspirations which have led the march 
of civilization. It has never been enough that men 
should acknowledge God in the secret chambers 


86 


NEW STREAMS 


of their own souls; the needs of the great world 
have demanded public declaration of faith and 
service, and the private adoration has sought for 
visible shrine and audible worship as surely and 
by as true a law of nature as the sap at the root 
of the tree seeks the revelation of itself in flower 
and fruit. 

* 

* * 

The object of the church on Sunday is only to 
give you true concert pitch ; the week is given 
you to play your tune in. 

* 

* * 

Schism in the Church is the mother of skepti¬ 
cism without. A divided Church makes an unbe¬ 
lieving world. 

* 

* * 

The church never fulfills its highest and noblest 
function except when its priests bear the ark of 
God in advance of humanity, and pioneer the way, 
that civilization, with all its accompaniments of 
liberty, education, and personal comfort, may fol¬ 
low. In every good word and work, in everything 
which tends to ameliorate the condition or improve 
the character of mankind, in every movement to 
enlarge the sphere or deepen the current of educa¬ 
tion, to give industry a larger play and a better re¬ 
ward, to promote temperance, cleanliness, health, 
happiness, good government, in village, county, 
state, or nation, the preacher^ th§ teacher, the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


87 


Christian, in a word, the church, should be in the 
front rank, leading the way, inspiring courage, in¬ 
citing hope, strengthening purpose, elevating and 
clarifying faith, fearless of obstacles, confident in 
God, assured of victory. 

* 

* * 

The door of the Church should swing both ways 
on its hinges. It should be easy for men to come 
in ; and if they find they have made a mistake, or 
if we find they have made a mistake, it should be 
easy for them to go out. The Church of to-day is 
quite too much like a labor union into which men 
are coerced by threats of peril hereafter, which 
nevertheless they cannot enter without satisfying 
artificial conditions, and from which they cannot 
escape without subjecting themselves to obloquy 
and derision. 

* 

* * 

I go into a hospital, and the physicians in consul¬ 
tation there have found that an injury to some limb 
is so great that the limb must be amputated; for it 
is better that this man should go into life with a 
cork leg than that he should be carried to the bury¬ 
ing ground an unmutilated corpse. But what if 
thereupon the consulting physicians should recom¬ 
mend us all to have our legs cut off, because cork 
legs cannot be bruised or maimed, and a broken 
one can be easily replaced ? Are we all to go on 
cork legs because so we shall avoid all danger of 


88 


NEW STREAMS 


sprains ? If my right hand or my right eye threat¬ 
ens me or my neighbor with death, I will get along 
without either; but the world is not to go blind of 
eye nor handless as a necessary means for its pro¬ 
tection. The function of the Christian Church is 
to teach men, not how to do without an eye and 
without a hand, but how to use their eyes and 
their hands. 

* 

* * 

The power of the pulpit does not depend on the 
theological form, still less on the literary; it de¬ 
pends on the life which beats beneath the form. 
The sap makes the fruit; the bark only protects 
the sap. 

* 

* * 

The Church is not an organization to entertain 
people; it is not an organization to provide them 
with safe and innocent amusement; it is not an 
organization to furnish substitutes for the theater ; 
it is an institution to furnish spiritual life. 

* 

* * 

The power of the pulpit depends on the life of 
the preacher ; on the intensity and reality of his 
faith; on the vitality of his spiritual experience. 
This is the secret of pulpit power. Only as he 
travails in soul for the souls of his congregation 
can he preach any doctrine of atonement with 
effectiveness ; only as he is himself a new creature 
in Christ Jesus can he preach regeneration ; only 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


89 


as he loves the Bible can he commend it; only as 
he abhors sin in himself can he rebuke it in others; 
only as he is a man of prayer can he develop the 
spirit of prayer in his people; only as he lives 
Christ can he preach Christ. 

* 

* * 

Any church is sacred where are true reverence 
and love : any church is profane where they are not. 

* 

* * 

No man has ever achieved a great pulpit success 
who has not believed in the divine indwelling — in 
a present, helpful God — and believed in him also 
not merely as a theological hypothesis, but with a 
vital personal faith, the product of an actual experi¬ 
ence. Men have done good work on the lecture 
platform, and in the cultivation of the humanities 
and philanthropies, without this faith; but they have 
never deeply and permanently stirred human souls. 

* 

* * 

The work of the ministry, as it is the noblest, so 
it is the most difficult which God has given any 
man to do. But the difficulty is not solved by 
dodging it and undertaking something else. If 
man is not willing to undertake to produce health 
in diseased bodies he ought not to undertake to be a 
doctor; and if a man is not willing to undertake 
the far more difficult task of producing health in 
diseased souls he ought not to undertake the work 


90 


NEW STREAMS 


of a minister. Whatever advice he would give to 
a layman to cultivate the spiritual life he should 
first act in himself; and if he has no advice to give 
he is wholly unprepared for his profession. He 
should go back and begin his studies anew. 

* 

* * 

Power of expression is also a gift as well as an 
acquisition. To suppose that every good man can 
preach to edification is just as absurd as to sup¬ 
pose that every good man can paint to delectation. 
Some men have great power of appreciating beauty, 
and no power of expressing it. Some men have 
great power of appreciating the truths of the divine 
life, but no power to give expression to them. But 
the one art can be developed as well as the other; 
and the secret of the preacher’s success is in his ac¬ 
quisition and development, by inheritance or edu¬ 
cation, or both combined, of this power of a divine 
life in himself, and the faculty of so expressing it 
as to produce it in other hearts. 

% 

* * 

The successful preacher of to-day is a seer. He 
who demonstrates truth does so to empty churches; 
he who sees it and enables others to see it never 
lacks auditors. 

* 

* * 

It is a bad sign for a preacher when his preach¬ 
ing awakens no antagonisms; when it is only and 
wholly popular. “Woe unto you when all men 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


91 


speak well of you.” Obloquy is not a conclusive 
evidence of Christian grace; but absolutely unim¬ 
paired popularity is a strong indication of the want 
of it. Every Christian preacher should have, like 
Christ, a fan in his hand, and his life and his preach¬ 
ing should have a judgment-day quality in them. 

* # 

There is no more religion in going to church for 
enjoyment than in going to a theater for enjoy¬ 
ment. Indeed, the two are sometimes much alike. 
It is very pleasing to have our sensibilities stirred. 
We are all willing to pay the man—actor or 
preacher — who will make us laugh or make us 
cry; and most of us like better to cry than to 
laugh. The true function of the preacher is to 
make us do; but that is quite another matter. 

* 

* * 

The teacher of religion has something more to 
do than to inculcate a science ; he has to inspire a 
life. The object of religion is to make men better; 
and men are made better only when their senti¬ 
ments are purified and their motives are changed. 
The world wants not a new speculative philosophy, 
but purer sentiments and nobler and more power¬ 
ful motives. It wants not greater precision in 
theological statement, but nobler impulses in the 
divine life. It wants not a better scientific defini¬ 
tion of sin, but profounder penitence ; not a com¬ 
prehensive knowledge of the arithmetic of eternity 


92 


NEW STREAMS 


but a dominant sense of personal accountability to 
God ; not a new speculative conception of omnipre¬ 
sence, but a new experience of the living God in 
the living soul. And this need of the world is the 
need of the church and of the ministry. Churches 
are half-filled to-day because the people are weary 
of truth speculatively and philosophically con¬ 
ceived ; wherever it is presented to them senti¬ 
mentally and practically the church is thronged. 
The sentiment may even be mawkish and the 
poetry doggerel; the attempt to speak to the heart 
rarely fails; the attempt to rule the life by speak¬ 
ing alone to the head never succeeds. It is an old 
saying that many a man forgets his piety in learn¬ 
ing theology. 

* 

* * 

Preaching is not to build up one system of the¬ 
ology or to destroy another system. It is to make 
men. Do not exhibit your theology, but use it. 
Do not preach your unbeliefs, but your beliefs. At¬ 
tack no man’s creed ; simply employ your creed 
in making better men and women. 

* 

* * 

It may be laid down as an axiom that no man 
can produce in another spiritual experiences which 
he does not possess in himself. Spiritual life pro¬ 
pagates itself by sympathy. It is contagious. A 
poet may write beautifully about joy; a philoso¬ 
pher may analyze it; a theologian may demonstrate 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


93 


that we ought to be joyful; but neither rhetoric, 
philosophy or logic will have the slightest tendency 
to produce in us any more joy than the preacher 
possesses in himself. His sermon is simply useful 
as an expression of his own experience ; and if he 
has no experience to express, his sermon is useless. 
The first condition of ministerial success is the de¬ 
velopment in the minister himself of those experi¬ 
ences, those traits of character, that divine life, 
which he desires to produce in others. 

* 

* * 

Wherever there is gold, take it; no matter with 
what earth it is mixed, if you can separate it and 
it will pay for the process. Whatever theology 
brings you to a clearer vision of God and his truth, 
take it; whatever worship brings you to a nearer 
communion with God and his Spirit, use it. What¬ 
soever things make for truth, honesty, justice, pu¬ 
rity, think on them. The best preacher is the 
preacher who does the most to make you a better 
man. The best church is the church that does the 
most to develop in you truth, goodness, and purity. 
The best literature is the literature which develops 
the best character. All things, all experiences, all 
lives, all teachings are yours: Calvinistic and Ar- 
minian, Protestant and Catholic, Christian and 
Pagan. Whatsoever things, wherever found, are 
true, honest, just, pure—think on them, feed on 
them, grow by them. Good food from an earthen 


94 


NEW STREAMS 


platter is better than poor food from Sevres china. 
It is the water which quenches the thirst, not the 
cup from which you drink it. 

* 

* * 

Many a minister toils on in discouragement, 
thinking he is doing nothing, because his congre¬ 
gation never bring garlands and oxen to sacrifice 
to him, as they do to his more popular brother, but 
doing really a far deeper and more powerful work, 
because he is directing the thoughts of men to 
Christ so effectively that they have no thought for 
him. They see only the sun; the lens is so clear 
and transparent that they are unconscious of its 
power and almost of its existence. On the other 
hand, many an unfortunate minister mistakes the 
admiration which the people bestow on him for 
reverence for the truth of which he is the bearer 
and the Master of whom he is a messenger. Gar¬ 
lands for the ministers are too often only a sign of 
a work hindered, not accomplished ; of an idolatry, 
not a reverence and a worship. 

* 

* * 

It is the business of the preacher to teach us, 
not what to think, but how to live. 

* 

* * 

All creeds contain truth; no creed is truth. No 
creed ever can be truth. Creeds are the attempt 
to state in intellectual forms spiritual truth; and 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


95 


it transcends all intellectual statement, even all 
intellectual apprehension. The love of God is 
infinitely more than the doctrine that God is love; 
the experience of peace in sin forgiven is infinitely 
more than any doctrine of the atonement. 

* 

* * 

The business of the preacher is not to tell men 
that they are in darkness; they will not find it out 
from the preacher. He is to be a herald of the 
dawn. If he can make men see the dawn approach¬ 
ing, they will know by contrast what the night has 
been and is. 

* 

* * 

That is the best sermon which makes right 
living easier Monday morning. 

* * 

If there ever is a church universal, with a common 
faith, the symbol of that faith will be, if not in 
exact phraseology, at least in spirit and essence, 
the Apostles’ Creed. It is the earliest; the near¬ 
est the Master; the simplest and purest; unstained 
by blood of persecution or smoke of battle ; the un¬ 
questioned faith of the Christian church universal. 
* 

* * 

There is no semblance of a creed imposed upon 
or demanded of Christ’s followers. To cast out of 
our Christian fellowship a Christian disciple because 
he does not approve our forms of organization, or 


96 


NEW STREAMS 


our etiquette of worship, or our intellectual state¬ 
ment of doctrine, or to receive as a Christian dis¬ 
ciple any one because he accepts either our church 
order, our church ritual, or our church creed, or 
even all three, is to proceed upon principles very 
different from those on which our Lord proceeded 
in the organization of his infant church. 

* 

* * 

Forms are like the trunk of the tree, put out for 
its protection by the life within. They are like 
the blossoms on the tree; when the fruit no longer 
needs them they will drop of themselves. 

* 

* * 

Religion is an applied, not an abstract, science ; 
it is the art of right living. And he who goes to 
church to get instruction in that art can generally 
get something from even very plain sermons. 

* 

* * 

The one thing which is essential to a Christian 
church, without which no body, whatever its con¬ 
stitution, ritual, or creed, is a church of Christ, is 
the supreme love which says to him, Make thou 
what thou wilt of us; the supreme allegiance which 
says, We will follow thee whithersoever thou goest; 
the supreme dependence which to every suggestion 
of our departure from him replies, instinctively and 
intuitively, Whither shall we go? for thou alone 
hast the words of life. Whatever body, gathered 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


97 


in Christ’s name, drawn by his love, bound to¬ 
gether by allegiance to him, worships the God 
whom he has manifested, no matter by what ritual, 
holds fast personally to him, no matter in what 
theology they formulate their faith and consecrate 
themselves to his service, no matter how they 
organize to perform it, is a church of Christ; no 
other is. 

* 

* * 

Creeds are like the bark of a tree — a necessary 
covering and protection. But every year the tree 
must absorb its old bark and put forth a new one. 
He who would forbid the changing of the bark for¬ 
bids growth ; he who would strip it off altogether 
destroys life. 

* 

* * 

The way to find out whether Christ is of man 
or is from God is not to examine documents or 
investigate philosophies, but to attempt to repro¬ 
duce again upon earth his character and to live 
again upon earth, his life. 

* 

* * 

Creed, race, religion, condition, character, make 
no chasms that Christian love ought not to bridge. 
If it be Christian love, it bridges all chasms. 

# * 

You cannot surrender a liberty if the liberty is 
not yours. Paul, who insisted on the right of the 
Christian to judge for himself whether he would 


98 


NEW STREAMS 


eat or abstain from eating, would have insisted in 
our day on the right of every Christian to judge 
for himself whether he will drink or abstain from 
drinking. To his own Master he standeth or falleth. 
Who art thou that judgest thy neighbor? 

# 

# * 

It is reverence and love the world wants, not 
dead creeds and statements. 

* # 

Successful men are rarely contentious; conten¬ 
tious men are rarely successful. Friction is one of 
the greatest impediments to efficiency; and con¬ 
tinual contention is ‘continual friction. The men 
that are loudest in demanding their rights, are not 
the men who are most successful in getting them. 

* 

* # 

Every thing is ours; but ours to be master of, 
not to master us; to be subdued, not to subdue 
us; to be used, not to be abused; to be used wisely 
and prudently; to be used lovingly and tenderly; 
to be used only in those ways that make for the 
physical, intellectual and spiritual upbuilding of 
ourselves and of others. He who made wine by 
a miracle bade his disciples pluck out the right eye 
or cut off the right hand if either were leading into 
sin. Nothing is evil in itself; everything is evil 
which works evil. The right eye is innocent, use¬ 
ful, necessary; but it is better to pluck it out and 


L V OLD CHANNELS. 


99 


cast it from thee and enter into life blind, than, 
haying two eyes, to be cast into hell fire. Nothing, 
then, so innocent, so useful, so necessary, but that 
it is best to cut it off if it is leading you or your 
neighbor away from God and into sin. 

* 

# * 

Liberty and law are not antipodal one to the 
other. Liberty is in law and by obedience to law. 
# 

# * 

The liberty of the planet is the liberty of its 
orbit, and the liberty of man is the liberty of his 
orbit and obedience to the divine law. Unless 
3 t ou can find a corner of the universe so remote 
that God has never gotten there you cannot get 
away from the omnijjresence and the omnipotence 
of law. 

* 

* * 

Christianity is an evolution, a growing revelation 
of God in the Old Testament Scriptures, a revela¬ 
tion consummated in Jesus Christ, a growing life — 
in church, in social order, in theological thought 
-—beginning at Bethlehem, to be consummated at 
some far future no one knows when or how. 

* 

* * 

Christianity is incarnate love. A man may con¬ 
form to law because it is righteous law ; but he 
cannot love law. You cannot love an abstraction. 
You cannot love a thing. There must be some 


100 


NEW STREAMS 


heart, some power to love in return, in that which 
you love. You can love only a person. Chris¬ 
tianity comes and it shows in the heart of history 
this Divine Person, and says to us, Love for him — 
that is to he the constraining power, the motive 
power, the secret of your life. 

* 

* * 

Christianity is not a system of duties; it is not 
an organization of doctrines; belief in Christ is 
not respect for a noble man. The comfort that 
saves men here and now from the scalding tears 
and the riven heart and the bowed back and the 
lacerated soul is a faith that accepts Jesus Christ 
as a faithful and true witness, and believes that he 
says those things which he has seen and testifies 
those things which he does know. 

# 

# # 

Philosophy stands on the shore, peers out into the 
darkness, and thinks there is a continent. Chris¬ 
tianity brings back the message that there is one 
— a land not unknown, though too glorious for 
description. 

* 

* * 

It is not enough to smell the flowers of Chris¬ 
tianity; we must pluck its fruit. It is not enough 
to taste its sweets; we must sow its seed. 

# 

# * 

Christianity is not a choice flower which has 
growm up out of the earth; it is a gift from Heaven. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


101 


The New Testament is not builded by men’s hands: 
it descends out of Heaven unto men. The Chris¬ 
tian religion is not the last or highest achievement 
of human development; it is the hand of Almighty 
God reached down out of Heaven to lift man up 
and set him in heavenly places. To be a Christian 
is not merely to do right: it is to be born again ; 
it is to be endowed with a new and heavenly life, 
the gift of God. 

* 

* * 

Men call Christianity a dream! If it is a dream, 
then hundreds of thousands all through the cen¬ 
turies have been dreaming this same dream, and 
those who have been the most unhappy and the 
most pernicious of the race have been those who 
have had their dreams broken. 

* 

* * 

Life is man seeking for God; Christianity is God 
seeking for man. All religions show us man search¬ 
ing after God ; Christianity shows us God searching 
after man. 

* 

* #- 

Men have found it hard to accept the revelation 
of God in Christianity because at so many points 
it has reversed their ideals and destroyed their 
illusions. Instead of coming as the word of the 
watchers on the mountain peaks of intelligence and 
opportunity, it has continually sought its heralds 
out of the valleys; instead of putting on the gar- 


102 


NEW STREAMS 


ments of royalty and appearing before men crowned 
and sceptered, it has worn every disguise of humil¬ 
ity and obscurity; instead of revealing its divine 
splendor in the unspeakable glories of heaven it 
has allied itself with sorrow and made its home 
with the stricken. Its divinity shines out in this 
reversal of earthly conceptions and habitual dis¬ 
regard of human ideals; it is still so far beyond 
the thoughts of men that they who profess it can 
stop by the way to dispute as who shall be first in 
its kingdom and they who reject it can find in its 
divinest disclosures ground for skepticism. Reli¬ 
gions that have grown out of human thought and 
aspiration have set the seal of divinity on beauty 
and greatness; God only has touched the meanest 
things and given them the radiance of an infinite 
meaning. Genius, art, empire, suggest thoughts of 
majesty and power; it was reserved for Christianity 
to lift the lowliest and the most despised spheres 
of life up into the sunlight of God’s love. 

* 

* * 

From the hour when it was cradled in a manger 
Christianity has made alliance with the sadness, 
the wretchedness, the awful mystery of life ; it has 
stood beside every abyss and let the light stream 
into it; it has grappled with the darkest sorrows 
and prophesied with uplifted face the dawn of a 
day all the more radiant for the darkness of the 
night that preceded it; it has declared' among 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


103 


wrecked hopes the eternal safety of the soul’s 
treasures and happiness; it has affirmed under the 
crushing anguish of defeat the certainty of victory; 
it has sung over closing graves the Easter carols 
of immortality; with firm step and shining counte¬ 
nance it has walked the whole circle of darkness 
and mystery that closes round us, and looking 
through it with steadfast eye testified that it is but 
a mist of the night, which the morning will roll 
away. 

Passing by all the splendid portals through which 
it might have come, bearing the truth of life ever¬ 
lasting to despairing men, it entered in through the 
narrowest and darkest of all gateways into infinity: 
the grave. In the most appalling blackness it held 
aloft the lamp of immortality, in the most crushing 
sorrow it spoke the tenderest word, in the most 
awful mystery it revealed the divinest certainty. 
It had stretched over all calamities, burdens, sor¬ 
rows and disappointments the bow of promise; 
last of all, it descended into the grave, and lo ! 
that also was radiant, and the gate of Paradise. 

* 

* # 

To be good and to do good are not the sum and 
substance of Christianity. Th.ey are not peculiar 
to Christianity. There have been and are some 
excellent Jews and some excellent pagans. Moses 
was good and did good; Socrates was good and 
did good: but neither were Christians. These 


104 


NEW STREAMS 


things are the end of Christianity, but not Chris¬ 
tianity itself. The object of Christianity is to make 
men who shall be good and do good; but being 
good and doing good are not Christianity. The 
object of architecture is a house; but the house is 
not architecture. The object of medicine is health; 
but health is not medicine. 

* 

* * 

Put away entirely the pagan notion that to be 
saved is to be insured from future penalty and to 
believe is to pay the premium and receive a paid 
up policy. Salvation is character. We are saved 
from ourselves unto God. We are saved when we 
are heirs of God and joint heirs of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The ring and the shoes and the fatted 
calf are not salvation. All these the prodigal had 
when he was feasting in the far country with his 
boon companions. To be faithful is to have a filial 
heart and a father’s love. It is not pearly gates 
and golden streets that make heaven. The pearly 
gates are outside ; and the golden streets are under 
our feet. No soul is lost because in hell or saved 
because in heaven. He is in hell because he is 
lost, in heaven because he is saved. If Christ 
preached to the spirits in prison, as Peter says he 
did, he was in prison, but he was not lost. 

* 

# * 

The message of Christianity is a message of sal¬ 
vation from sin. The grand purport of Christianity 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


105 


is in its announcement of redemption, and in its 
clear declaration that redemption is not through 
any jugglery whereby sin’s penalty is evaded, but 
by a divine power and through a vital process 
whereby man is to become holy and so like God. 
There is nothing speculative in this message of 
the Gospel. It holds itself strictly to facts, and 
presses itself unflinchingly on the human con¬ 
science. There is no room for debate. God is 
holy, man is sinful; and God freely, mercifully, 
mightily seeks to make men holy. 

# 

# * 

Salvation is getting out of the power and pollu¬ 
tion of sin. There can be no true salvation except 
as it issues in holiness. Reconciliation to God is 
not an artificial “patching up” of moral differences 
between man and God. It is making man like God 
in will and character, so that moral difference 
ceases to exist. 

* 

* * 

Christ came to give men power to become the 
sons of God. He came not to give men new ideas, 
but new force. He came not chiefly to instruct, 
but to inspire. He came not to lecture about 
moral hygiene, but to cure the sick and restore 
the dying. He came as the brazen serpent came 
to the sin-bitten in the wilderness. He came to 
give life to the dead, and to give it more abund¬ 
antly to the living. He came to bring a Gospel 


106 


NEW STREAMS 


which should be the power of God unto the saving 
of men. He came not to teach the strong how to 
swim, but as a rope thrown into the surf to the 
wave-buffeted that cannot swim. lie came not to 
sketch ideals of government, the family, society; 
this Plato did, and Rousseau, and Thomas More. 
He came to put into government an electricity that 
should purify it, into the family a love that should 
make it sacred, into society a majestic force that 
should draw it together and save it from its own 
anarchy. He came, in a word, to bring God into 
the consciousness and life of men. And he still 
comes, to give wisdom for ignorance, strength for 
weakness, goodness for badness, love for selfishness 
and passion. He comes to give hope to the despair¬ 
ing, and health to the sick, and rest to the weary, 
and life to the dead. He is a physician. Chris¬ 
tianity is medicine. The sum and substance of 
Christianity is salvation. 

* 

* * 

We cannot enter the kingdom of Christ, once 
for all; we cannot buy a ticket, pay our passage 
money, get into the good ship Salvation, say we 
are bound to the port of Heaven, and give our¬ 
selves no more concern. 

% 

^ % 

Salvation is not something you are to get in 
heaven by and by, on condition that you do some¬ 
thing or believe something or think something or 
experience something here on earth now. Salva- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


107 


tion is not a crown on the head, nor a palm in the 
hand, nor gold in the streets to walk on, nor pearly 
gates to go through, nor a privilege of sitting and 
singing and paying nothing, nor any such thing. 
I will not say that the Bible does not declare that 
man will be saved from future punishment through 
faith in Christ; but I do say that that is not the 
burden of the Bible declaration ; and it has been 
made the burden of preaching altogether too often. 
The great good news of the Bible is this : men are 
saved from the burdens of their present life ; they 
are saved from the darkness of their skepticism; 
from the bondage of their superstition; from the 
cruelty and the inhumanity of their selfish natures; 
from the weakness of a will that cannot hold them 
firm and strong in the midst of temptation ; from 
sin here and now. 

* 

* * 

Salvation is character. To be noble and true¬ 
hearted is to be saved. 

* 

* * 

Salvation is not plucking out here and there an 
individual from a wreck or a fire; it is lifting the 
wreck off the rocks, putting out the fire, rebuild¬ 
ing a fairer, better structure from the ruins than 
before. 

* 

* * 

Salvation and sanctification are descriptive of 
character; the first a character begun, the second 
a character completed. Character can never be 


108 


NEW STREAMS 


furnished ready-made. Virtue is never and never 
can be vicariously achieved for another. Vicarious 
suffering is the law of the universe; but vicarious 
righteousness? — never! The mother suffers for 
her child; and by her suffering she saves him. 
But no courage of mother can serve for courage in 
a coward boy, no purity of mother for purity in a 
sensual boy. Righteousness can never be put on 
from without. It must grow from within. 

* 

* * 

There are a great many people who have the 
idea that salvation is a relief from a penalty here 
or hereafter. That salvation is goodness, righteous¬ 
ness, character, purity, truth ; that it does not make 
so much difference whether a man suffers or not, 
but it makes a great difference whether a man is 
true or not — this stands in the front of our Gos¬ 
pel. The suffering of Jesus Christ is a suffering 
not for the sake of letting men off from punishment, 
but for the sake of purifying men. 

* 

* * 

Jesus Christ does not come to add a new condi¬ 
tion to salvation, and make it more difficult than it 
was before. He comes to make it easier for us to 
see that God is rich in mercy, and easier to accept 
the free gift of God’s love and life. 

* 

* * 

When a man is born of God, and cradled in the 
arms of his mother God, lie is safe, he is safe. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


109 


Every fatigue, every weariness, every hour of 
soul weariness, of world-disgust, of ennui, is an in¬ 
vitation of Christ to come to him. You have 
neither to repent nor to believe before coming; 
coming is repentance and belief. 

* 

* * 

Regret is not repentance; one may regret the 
sin because of its consequences. Reformation is 
not repentance; One may reform because a sinful 
life costs much and pays little. Repentance is the 
revolt of the conscience against the wrong-doing, 
because it is a wrong-doing. Its language is that of 
the fifty-first Psalm ; that of the Prodigal Son ; that 
of Paul in more than one passage of his experience. 
* 

# * 

The repentance that exhausts itself in tears, the 
revival that expends itself in exaltation, is a failure 
before God, and is rightly scoffed at by worldly 
men. Every repentance should be accompanied by 
deeds meet for repentance, every revival by the 
fruits of a new and divine life. When men sacri¬ 
fice the interests that have been gained by fraud 
and falsehood, by violations of the law of love and 
the Golden Rule, they give better evidences of their 
piety than can ever be given by public prayers and 
recited experiences. 

* 

* * 

The gates of the Heavenly City are flung wide 
open day and night, and when you die you will go 


110 


NEW STREAMS 


straight up to that gate and walk in—if you wish. 
But as men dive to the bottom of the sea, incase 
themselves in armor, and then going down are un¬ 
touched by the sea, we, by our j^ride, our selfish¬ 
ness, our vanity, our self-conceit, our appetites, 
incrust ourselves with an outer incrustation, so, 
that, standing in the midst of purity and light and 
life, we are untouched by it, solitary in the king¬ 
dom of God on earth, solitary in the kingdom of 
God in heaven. 

* 

* * 

The most awful fact of human life is the power 
of the human soul to accept God or reject him as 
it will. 

* 

* * 

A halting, hesitating disciple is no disciple. 
There stands the plow. Either leave it alone, or, 
if you take hold of it at all, put your eye on the 
line before you and give your whole heart and 
thought to the furrow you are about to plow. 
Your choice of Christ, your love for Christ, your 
consecration to Christ must settle all questions, or 
it is no choice, no love, no consecration at all. 
There are crises in life in which a hesitating, wav¬ 
ering, irresolute love is none at all. This is one of 
them. 

* 

* * 

Obedience is the inseparable accompaniment and 
evidence of faith. In deepest fact there is no dis¬ 
tinction between them. They are the systole and 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


Ill 


diastole of the spiritual heart; or, rather, the one is 
breathing and the other pulse-beat. Obedience is 
not conformity to a ritual requirement, but response 
to a spiritual attraction. In the first place, through 
trust love rises, and love is the spring of obedience* 
It makes for itself a body of service. 

* 

* * 

There is a radical difference between issuing a 
command and making a request, as there is between 
yielding obedience and granting a favor. You may 
couch a command in the form of a request; but 
there must be the consciousness of authority be¬ 
hind it. It is not enough that your children love 
you, and will do you favors; they must honor you 
and yield you obedience. This is what is meant 
by the aphorism, “ The fear of the Lord is the be¬ 
ginning of wisdom ; ” fear is reverence for author¬ 
ity. The best driver so holds his reins that the 
horse always feels the bit in his mouth ; between 
the man who lets the reins lie slack upon the horse’s 
back, and the man who is always pulling and haul¬ 
ing at the horse’s mouth, it is hard to choose. Ser¬ 
vants like best the master who possesses authority 
without brandishing it in their faces. 

* 

* * 

Life is a campaign. Every good captain will 
have his plan of campaign ; but he will change it 
in the midst of the battle if need .be, and every 
subordinate will be always ready to receive and act 


112 


NEW STREAMS 


on orders from his superior. The perfection of 
skill is to comprehend the general’s plans and work 
to them. 

* 

* * 

To obey God is to draw near to him. He will 
come to the soldier who does faithfully his duty on 
the battlefield, and will refuse himself to the soldier 
who deserts his post to come after him. 

* 

* * 

The conditions of eternal life, according to 
Christ, are two : desire and obedience. And these 
two are but one : a sincere desire ; a life quest. 

* 

* * 

Obedience is not only a doing, but also a submit¬ 
ting. It is an achieving, but it is also an enduring. 

* 

* * 

Human government and human society are as 
truly divinely ordained institutions as the family 
or the church. Every man is born into a social 
organism, and has no more right to abstract him¬ 
self from it and live an isolated life, than has the 
branch to separate itself from the tree, or the 
planet to diverge from its orbit, and stray off into 
immensity. He must live with his fellowmen ; he 
is only one wheel in the great social mechanism — 
or rather, one cog of one wheel. Government 
cannot exist, society cannot move along harmoni¬ 
ously, without a mutual spirit of obedience, in the 
broadest and largest sense of that term. Com- 


m OLD CHANNELS. 


113 


plaisance, yielding, a subordination of the indivi¬ 
dual judgment and taste to that of the community, 
are essential to community of life. A practical 
acceptance of the x4postolic motto, “ Submit your¬ 
selves one to another,” is essential to the well-being 
of man, and the peaceful ordering of society. 

* 

# * 

It is every man’s duty to learn what God’s plan 
for him is, and to prepare himself to do it. How 
to do this is the problem of life. But one thing 
is very certain ; it is not to be done by having a 
plan of our own and endeavoring to conform the 
universe to our own decrees. He that would be 
the elect of God must be willing that God should 
choose, and willing to carry out faithfully God’s 
choice, to whatsoever it may lead him. This is 
the first requisite. And the second is that he 
should prepare for his future by being faithful in 
his present place. 

* 

* * 

To have faith in Christ is to follow him in what 
he bids us do. He who does this is saved — no 
matter what creed he starts with; no matter what 
lack of feeling may be his. He who disobeys can¬ 
not compensate for that lack of obedience either 
by a correct creed or by ardency of feeling. 

* 

* * 

Cease looking within for the evidence or the 
want of evidence of God’s grace. Struggle, wres- 


114 


NEW STREAMS 


tie, pray, not that you may enjoy God, but that 
you may do his will. Take up the cross he lays 
down before you; put all your thought in the 
question how you may best carry that, and leave 
him to give you rest from it or help in it as and 
when he will. Duty faithfully done is not always 
a short road to peace and joy; but it is the only 
road there is. Follow it. Forget your experi¬ 
ences ; think only of your duties. Struggling to 
enjoy Christ is just the way not to enjoy him. 
Struggle only to follow him. 

* 

* * 

Life is a growth, not a manufacture; and the 
secret of successful living is patient obedience, not 
anxious endeavor. 

% 

* * 

Do the present duty; do not wait for a future 
light. Action is as often the parent of feeling as 
feeling of action. Christ says not, Weep, nor 
Rejoice, but, Follow me. 

# 

# * 

If Paul were living in our day he would not 
ransack the writings of Huxley and Tyndall and 
Spencer to prove them atheists. He would ran¬ 
sack them for a different purpose. He would try 
not to make the worst, but the best out of them. 
He who quoted, not Lucretius, but Aratus and 
Cleanthes, would find evidences of theism, not of 
atheism, in modern philosophy and modern science. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


115 


He would not refuse to welcome Mazoomdar be¬ 
cause he was not an orthodox Trinitarian; he would 
look in Matthew Arnold not for sentences against 
inspiration, but for sentences witnessing to a living 
God; he would cite the last page of Huxley’s 
monograph on Hume as a testimony — in some 
sense an unconscious testimony — to the trust¬ 
worthiness of spiritual perception ; he would find 
in Herbert Spencer’s favorite phrase, the Unknown 
and the Unknowable, unintentional witness of con¬ 
sciousness to the Infinite One, in whom we all live 
and move and have our being, and whom, there¬ 
fore, we all recognize in spite of ourselves. He 
would cull even from Robert Ingersoll, not his 
worst blasphemies, but his reluctant testimonies to 
the divine in man and about man. For every man 
bears witness, in spite of himself, to the Eternal 
Goodness; and even when he is arguing that God 
is not testifies by his very language that God is. 

* 

* * 

Moral truths are not like mathematical truths. 
Their truthfulness depends upon the spirit in which 
they are held and the use which is made of them. 

* 

* * 

Truth is more than sentiment; more than poetry; 
but it is also more than speculation or philosophy. 
He that substitutes for crystalline thinking pleasant 
sentiments or pretty poeticism does not conceive 
of truth at all. But he who conceives of religious 


116 


NEW STREAMS 


truth clearly and profoundly conceives of that 
which can only be expressed by poetry, and must 
always be infused by sentiment; that is, he must 
conceive of it sentimentally and poetically. 

* * 

If a man builds, nature straightway sets to work 
to undo his building. Bust eats into the iron, and 
decay into the wood, and little by little time rav¬ 
ages and destroys. But if a man plants, nature 
proceeds to complete his unfinished work. He 
sows a seed, and behold wheat; he plants a cut¬ 
ting, and behold a tree. Such is the difference 
between working alone and working with God. 
He who sows truth in human hearts works with 
God. The seed drops into the heart; lies there; 
is long time hidden; sprouts; pushes forth the 
blade and ear, and finally the full corn. Not at 
once, often only after long delay; but it fails not. 
Heaven and earth shall pass away; all things mate¬ 
rial decay. But my words shall not pass away; 
truth is imperishable. 

* 

* * 

When men believe without inquiry they are as 
likely to believe falsehood as truth. The golden 
age is before us, not behind us. If it is wicked to 
ask questions let us cease to honor Luther, who set 
us the example. The child begins by believing 
everything that everybody tells him. His nurse 
tells him hobgoblin stories, and he does not doubt 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


117 


the hobgoblins. His older brother tells him that 
the moon is made of green cheese, and he does not 
question the veracity of his informant. The first 
thing to do in life is to pick up information; there 
is no time then to sift out the true from the false. 
Like the ash-cart men, who dump the barrels into 
their cart, coal, ashes and all, and leave the sifting 
process to by and by, the child takes all that is 
offered to him We are never tired of praising 
the simple faith of childhood. It is delightful in 
the child. But in the man it becomes the sign of 
stupidity. We berate at thirty what we praise at 
three. 

* 

* * 

Christianity is not afraid of investigation. Any 
system which shirks investigation proclaims by that 
very fact its fear lest its falsehood be discovered. 
Search to the bottom. Search for yourself. Prove 
all thingshold fast only that which is good. But 
prove all things, that you may find something good 
to hold fast to at last. That, be it much or little, 
will be your creed. 

* 

* * 

What is truth? It is God; and God is omnipo¬ 
tent. He that knows the truth and dares utter it 
speaks with God’s own voice; and God’s voice is 
irresistible. Is he but a Galilean rabbi? before his 
voice the Jewish formalism melts. Is he a Jewish 
itinerant? before his voice the Roman Empire 
crumbles. Is he a German peasant? before his 


118 


NEW STREAMS 


voice the Papal Empire falls to pieces. Is he but 
a single Oxford student? at his voice the State 
Church lays down its scepter. 

* 

* * 

The present age must search the Scriptures for 
itself, and learn its lessons and apply them to its 
own needs. The manna that was gathered in the 
sixteenth century is not the manna for the nine¬ 
teenth. The leaves of the tree of life are for the 
healing of the nations; but they must be gathered 
fresh from the living boughs, not dead and with¬ 
ered from last autumn’s strewing of the ground. 

* 

* * 

The old in theologic thought is called Narrow; 
the new Broad. The phrases are happy, but ought 
not to be antagonized. We are told that narrow¬ 
ness means concentration — force-power; breadth, 
shallowness, waste, weakness; and we are bidden 
be Broad or Narrow. Why not both — Broad and 
Narrow? The Master likened the kingdom to a 
mustard-seed that became a tree. The roots spread 
broadly beneath the soil, the trunk lifted sturdy 
and narrow, and then broadened into branches 
again in which the birds came and lodged. Yet 
it was all one tree, the same sap in breadth and 
narrowness. Surely there may in like manner be 
developments of truth, narrow and trunk-like, broad 
and branch-like, yet all of one germ. The truth 
has been well likened to a river. Where the stream 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


119 


narrows and deepens between the rocky walls, there 
is the place to put your mill and grind the grist. 
But the grain is raised where the stream broadens, 
overflows, shallows, and enriches the soil. “Cast 
thy seed-corn upon the face of the waters, for thou 
shalt find it after many days,” and when you find 
it there will be work for the mill up yonder. 
Breadth brings the harvest; narrowness grinds the 
grain; and both are needful. Why should the 
miller and the farmer fight? “All things work 
together; ” why cannot all thinkers ? If the line 
must be drawn, we can best spare the mill, and, 
like the Master, walk the fields, and, pressing the 
ripened grain with our palms, eat it raw. But the 
line need not be drawn. The stream of truth is 
both broad and narrow. Let the farmer-mind 
camp beside the overflowing of the stream, let 
the miller-mind build beside the narrowing of the 
stream; thus shall breadth and narrowness work 
together, and the hunger of the soul be fed. 

* 

* * 

Truth is the greatest of all powers. The world 
is full of sneering Pilates who ask, What is truth ? 
and do not wait for an answer; but truth goes on 
as quietly and as invincibly as the sunlight, and 
vanquishes everything. 

* 

* * 

God does not need to be justified; truth does 
pot need to be defended; the Gospel does not need 


120 


NEW STREAMS 


to be put behind breastworks. Christianity is to 
save us; we are not to save Christianity. God can 
take care of his own ; he does not need that his 
own should take care of him. Our business is not 
to defend the truth, but to use it; not to maintain 
the Gospel, but to proclaim it; not to preserve 
Christianity, but to intrust ourselves to its preserv¬ 
ing power. 

* 

* * 

Truth is not like an eggshell, which must be 
broken that a more sacred truth may emerge from 
it. It is not like a scaffold, which must be taken 
down and thrown away when its uses are served. 
Truth is a development. Each age prepares for 
the age which follows; and each generation,taking 
what its fathers saw, are to go on to a larger sight. 
Like a conquering army, we are to hold every ter¬ 
ritory occupied, while we go on to occupy what 
lies beyond. 

* 

* * 

There is as much unfaith in refusing to listen to 
and to consider a new view of truth as in shutting: 
out from our minds and our hearts an old one. 

* 

* * 

Light is invisible until it strikes a reflecting 
medium. The light as it exists in the waves of 
the ether no eye can see. The atmosphere trans¬ 
lates it into luminous forms, into visible forms. So 
the truth of God is invisible until it comes into 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


121 


the atmosphere of human thought and human ex¬ 
perience, and we study this atmosphere through 
which this light is translated to human eyes, in 
order that we may better see the light, and may 
better walk in it. 

* 

* * 

The truth of the present and the truth of the 
future is not to win its victory by putting to death 
the old system, except as a larger truth destroys 
the smaller one; and a grander view of truth the 
less grand truth; except as the oak destroys the 
acorn, the fruit the blossom, and the manhood 
the childhood out of which it grows. 

* 

* * 

The man who is ever learning truth is the man 
best fitted to teach it. 

* 

* * 

Laws are not manacles, they are muscles; not 
hindrances to force, or repression of being, but the 
force of our force and the life of our life and the 
strength of our strength. 

* 

* * 

No child can be made safe for the future by be¬ 
ing surrounded with a cage of laws, prohibitions, 
restrictions, and regulations in the present. It is 
not by caging an animal that you can domesticate 
him. It is not by binding him hand and foot that 
you can teach him to exercise hands and feet. Jt 
is not by law that any child can be safeguarded for 


122 


NEW STREAMS 


his future life. And the reason of this is evident. 
Law never does, and never can, in the nature of 
the case, enter into and lay hold upon the springs 
and sources of being. Law, at the best, can only 
conduct; and conduct, regulated to-day by external 
forces, does not necessarily make character that 
will sweep and swing through the future in safety. 
=* 

* * 

Law is useful to protect the innocent from the 
wrong-doer. Law is useful to hold a man back 
from evil courses until redemptive influences can 
he brought to bear upon him ; but law is not the 
divine method for the erection or construction of 
noble character. By law the father may protect 
one child from another ; by law, enforced by pen¬ 
alty, the father may restrain a child from evil 
courses until by educative influences he can awaken 
in him a better life; but by no mere enforcement 
of law can he make a good boy out of a bad one, 
or eradicate an evil habit, or supplant it with a 
good one. The essential doctrine of Christianity 
is the doctrine of the new birth. Christianity is 
not obeying laws, whether inculcated by Moses or 
Paul or Christ. Christianity is receiving a new 
and divine life. It is living under a new and di¬ 
vine impulse. It is, in the peculiar language of 
Swedenborg, the substitution of new loves for old 
loves. It is, in the language of Paul, a new crea¬ 
tion in Christ Jesus. Whatever influence in the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


123 


Church — whencesoever it proceeds and howsoever 
it may be authorized and sanctioned — tends to 
substitute for this doctrine of a new and divine life 
in the heart of the individual, an obedience, either 
from hope of reward or fear of punishment, to laws 
external to him, is a Pharisaic influence, and Christ 
warns his church against it. 

* 

* * 

If government is wrong, change it if you can. 
If it commands of you wrong-doing, disobey and 
submit to the penalty. But whether it be of the 
State, the school, the Church, or the household, 
however wrong it may be, however evil in form or 
administration, be not lawless and anarchical; set 
not yourself in array against such law and order as 
exists. For law and order are a part of God’s 
economy of human life; and he whose influence is 
set against them arrays himself against the divine 
order of society, the order of God, which embraces 
in it these three divine institutions — the Family, 
the Church, and the State. 

# * 

There is no power but of God ; the powers that 
be are ordained of God ; he that setteth himself in 
array against law, the State, social order, sets him¬ 
self against God. Loyalty to law, government, the 
State, social order, is allegiance to God. The State 
is as truly a divine institution as the Church or the 
Family. It is impossible that life should go on 


124 


NEW STREAMS 


without these' three institutions, all of which are 
established by God and are as old as the race. 
There carf be no spiritual life without the Church, 
no affectional life without the Family, no industrial 
life without the State. 

* * 

Order is Heaven’s first law. Liberty is not an¬ 
archy, nor lawlessness. Individualism is not the 
ideal toward which we are to strive. A mob is an 
army without order; an army is a mob in order. 
To accomplish anything in the world we must 
march in ranks. We must therefore yield some¬ 
thing to one another. The society must have its 
rules; the community its government; the club 
its by-laws; the church its creed and discipline. 
To break ranks, to disregard the rules, to violate 
the laws imposed by government, to over-step the 
by-laws of the club, to despise the creed and the 
traditions of the church, is to produce anarchy. 
And anarchy is as dangerous as despotism. Scylla 
on this side, Charybdis on that. Communities as 
well as individuals need habits. A good habit is 
a great safeguard to man, or society, or church. 

* 

* * 

Life is a battle, and every generation must sleep 
on its arms, and keep its scouts out. We cannot 
make our nation pious by putting the word God in 
the Constitution, or temperate by putting the word 
Prohibition in the statue book. Good laws are 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


T25 


only instruments; and the value of an instrument 
depends on the nerve and muscle of the man who 
wields it. The poorest flint-lock musket that was 
ever made, in the hands of a cool soldier, is worth 
more for defense than the best breech-loading rifle 
that ever was made, standing idly in the corner. 

* 

* * 

Good institutions cannot save a nation whose 
life is wrong ; nor can evil institutions destroy a 
nation whose life is right. A prohibitory system 
would do no good in hell, and low license would 
do no harm in heaven. 

* 

*■ * 

We are not a mere set of disintegrated individu¬ 
als, each with his own will to go his own way; we 
are bound together in one great harmonious whole 
from which in vain we struggle to escape. Inde¬ 
pendence ! — there is no such thing as independ¬ 
ence ; every man is dependent on every other 
man, and the richest man is most dependent of us 
all. We are bound one to another by great laws. 
If there is physical law and order in the universe, 
there is no less a moral law and order in the uni¬ 
verse. And if there is law, there is a law-giver ; 
if there is life, there is a life-giver. 

* 

* * 

That you can invoke God’s blessing upon your 
enterprise does not prove that the enterprise is a 
godly one ; it may only prove that your conception 


126 


NEW STREAMS 


of God is cruel and barbaric. There is but one 
test of all life’s actions — the test of love ; there is 
but one law by which to determine whether your 
conduct toward your fellow-man is truly reli¬ 
gious or irreligious—the law, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. Whatever springs out of a 
pure, deep, divine love to him, whether he be 
Christian or pagan, orthodox or heretic, faithful or 
apostate, is Christian ; whatever delights to inflict 
pain, suffering, disaster, disgrace, humiliation upon 
him, under whatever cloak it may be covered, and 
with whatever false prayers it may be sanctified, 
is wholly and utterly irreligious. 

* 

* * 

Fall? Yes! there is a fall. But it was not of 
the race in Adam. It is of every individual when, 
having been lifted up by the redeeming work of 
God from a lower to a higher condition, he goes 
back to the pit from which he was digged. Sin is 
a relapse. Sinfulness is in the elements of the old 
nature which makes such a relapse always a pos¬ 
sible and real danger. 

* 

# * 

It is hard that this man who has lived all his life 
surrounded by a fetid and evil atmosphere, with no 
Gospel preached to him, or none that he has under¬ 
stood, should go out at death into the darkness of 
a hopeless night. How do you know he goes out 
into the darkness of a hopeless night ? What reve- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


127 


lation, what angel has given you the right to 
say that God’s mercy stops at the grave, and that 
there is no life of hope beyond it — perhaps in a 
school where life renders better service and where 
mercy has a better opportunity ? I do not aver 
that the grave opens into another schoolroom, but 
I ask you what right have you to say that it does 
not? This man suffers and weeps many tears. 
This man goes through life clothed in purple and 
fine linen, happy all his life. But is happiness the 
best or tears the worst that can befall a man ? Are 
we set in life simply that we may smile, or guarded 
by love at least, we may not weep ? 

There is nothing worth living for but character, 
and there is no character but love. And this tu¬ 
multuous, tearful, perplexing, storm-tossed life of 
ours may be the very divinest method of making 
character. 

* 

* * 

I believe that no man has a right to assume that 
probation continues for every man till death. Life 
is made up of successive character trials. Every 
failure of the character weakens it for the succeed¬ 
ing trial, and makes the hope of final success less; 
every success strengthens the character, and makes 
the hope of final success greater. A man may so 
environ himself in sensuality, or covetousness, or 
ambition, or selfishness as to be beyond all hope of 
redemption in this life or the next. A man may, 
by repeated choosing of death rather than life, 


128 


NEW STREAMS 


cursing rather than blessing, evil rather than good, 
so give himself over to a reprobate mind that God 
gives him over also. When God loses hope for a 
soul, what is there left? I have stood by the 
dying bed of a young man who said, “ I cannot 
pray; ” and I believed him. A man’s spirit may 
die before his body does. The two deaths are not 
the same ; they are not even synchronous. No 
man can safely say, I will refuse God’s grace to-day 
and accept it to-morrow. For him there may be a 
long life and yet no to-morrow. Trial ends when 
it has done its work; not when disease or accident 
has destroyed the body. The body may become 
the coffin of a soul dead in sin. 

* 

* * 

The man who has committed a great sin and fol¬ 
lowed it with a deep repentance comes nearer to 
God than the man who has committed no great 
sin and has no feeling of deep repentance. 

* 

* * 

What is sin ? Not the deed that is done, not 
the outward thing, but the spirit and the motive 
that it springs out of. It is not the prinking be¬ 
fore the glass that is sinful; it is the vanity that 
makes the little girl prink before the glass that is 
sinful. It is not the good dinner that is sinful; 
it is the gluttony that is sinful. It is not the en¬ 
ergy and assiduity and skill in acquisition that is 
sinful; it is the covetousness that lies back of that 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


129 


and inspires it and makes it mean, that is sinful. It 
is not what I have done that is sinful. It is I, my¬ 
self, it is that which is within me —that is the sin. 

* 

* * 

The way to God is the way of penitence for sin. 
There is no other. 

* 

* * 

Sin does not produce devils in us all at once, any 
more than grace begets angels. There is an in¬ 
fancy in evil as well as in good, and it is often hard 
to tell the imp from the cherub. But each surely 
matures. We must check or cherish it early or 
the demon will grow and the seraph perish. 

* 

* * 

Sin is worse than any punishment, worse even 
than remorse. Is there any cure for it ? Conduct 
often repeated becomes a habit; habit long con¬ 
tinued becomes a second nature. Thus we are 
building ourselves for good or for evil, generally 
for both. We are what we have done. 

* 

* * 

Christ does not palliate or excuse sin. He does 
not treat it as a light matter. He does not coddle 
sinners. He does not call them victims. He calls 
things by their right names. Sin is not imperfec¬ 
tion. There is a radical difference between a green 
apple and a rotten apple. The immature man is 
green, raw, uncompleted ; a wicked man is corrupt, 
rotten, going down toward death. Sin is not dis- 


130 


NEW STREAMS 


ease — at least it is not merely disease — it is the 
willful, deliberate doing of what we know to be 
wrong. It is true that we sometimes shut our eyes 
to the wrong, and walk into it; it is true we some¬ 
times do not stop to consider what is the signifi¬ 
cance of our act; but sin is self-will ; it is the 
determination, more'or less conscious, and arrived 
at and expressed in action, to do that which we 
know in our heart of hearts to be unrighteous. 
This Christ never palliates, never excuses, never 
justifies. He does not call a lie a fib; he does not 
call stealing anything else than stealing; he does 
not gloss over sin with euphonious phrases; he 
marks iniquity with iniquity. 

* 

* * 

The more I study my Bible the more un-Script¬ 
ural seems to me the conception of endless sin ; 
the nearer I come into fellowship with God my 
Father, my Saviour, my Comforter, the more intol¬ 
erable grows the thought of it to me. And I thank 
God for the good hope in his Word which permits 
me to look forward to and haste toward the day 
when this terrible tragedy of sin and pain will 
come to an end. 

* 

* * 

If the Hew Testament warnings may well 
awaken fear in every sinner lest his sin become 
incorrigible, its prophecies give to every Christian 
good ground of hope in a final, perfect redemption. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


131 


They foretell a kingdom of Christ to which all the 
kingdoms of this earth shall belong ; an hour when 
every knee shall bow and every tongue shall con¬ 
fess Jesus Christ to be Lord, to the glory of God 
the Father; a reconciliation of all things unto 
the Redeemer, whether upon the earth or in the 
heavens ; a millennial glory in which his kingdom 
will come and his will be done on earth as in heaven; 
a new song unto him that sitteth upon the throne 
and unto the Lamb forever, sung by every creature 
which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under 
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
are in them. In the New Testament picture of 
this hour of triumph I see no shadow of scowling 
faces of angered and unrepentant rebels ; in the 
New Testament echo of this song of the redeemed 
I hear no interrupting of wail or wrath from any 
far-off prison-house of despair. After the last 
enemy is destroyed, shall sin, worst of all enemies, 
still live, and work his ruin eternally? When God 
hath put all enemies under Christ’s feet, shall this 
worst of all enemies still rule in triumph over some 
remote reserved corner of creation ? 

* 

* * 

Suffering may be an evil. But it may be a good. 
It is not inherently and essentially evil. Sin is the 
only absolute evil; the one thing that is always, 
and everywhere, and under all circumstances, evil. 
It is an evil, not because it brings suffering, but 


132 


NEW STREAMS 


because it is sin. If it brought happiness it would 
still be an evil. The utilitarian theory of life, 
which makes happiness the real good, and virtue 
good only because it produces happiness, and suf¬ 
fering the only evil, and sin an evil only because it 
produces suffering, destroys the foundations of 
morality and saps the sources of spiritual life. 
This is true philosophically and it is true as an ex¬ 
perience. He who feels keenly his sin will be little 
concerned by the suffering in him which it involves. 
The burden of his soul will be, I have sinned: not, 
My child will die, but “ Against thee, thee only, 
have I sinned; ” not, I am in rags and hunger, but 
“ I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, 
and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” 

* 

* * 

Forgiveness is not remission of penalty ; it is re¬ 
mission of sin itself. It is reconciliation to God ; 
peace with one’s own conscience ; quietude of soul; 
the dismission of remorse; the stilling of the aven¬ 
ger within ; and the cleansing from the baleful, per¬ 
nicious, venomous sin itself. To repent is to seek 
not escape from penalty, but deliverance from sin. 
* 

* * 

We do not lialf-believe the Word of God. The 
Christians are the unbelievers. We do not take 
God at his Word. We go burdened and bowed 
down with sins which God would send off into the 
wilderness, to be seen neither by him nor by us 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


133 


any more forever. When Bunyan’s Pilgrim came 
to the cross his load rolled off from him into the 
tomb of Christ and was no more seen. We carry 
our burden strapped to our shoulders all the way 
along our pilgrimage, and make it a matter of re¬ 
ligious duty to take it off every night, or at least 
once a week, and make an inventory of its contents. 
It is our privilege, having once confessed our sin 
to God and received his pardon, to forget those 
things which are behind, and to press forward to¬ 
ward the mark of the prize of the* high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus. God has buried our sins in 
the depths of the sea. Why should we try to fish 
them up again ? God has sent them off into the 
wilderness. Why should we follow the scapegoat 
that we may recover and bear them again ourselves? 

* 

* * 

The moment the wicked man forsakes his wicked 
ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and 
returns to God, God receives him with abundant 
forgiveness. There is no change to be wrought in 
God’s disposition, as too often, alas! in ours. Man 
can make no change in the divine disposition; 
Christ has made no change in the divine dispo¬ 
sition. But Christ reveals what that disposition is, 
and man can authoritatively declare it, assuring 
every wrong-doer who resolves to cease to do evil 
and learn to do well that no change is needed in 
God’s disposition, and that the Father waits to re- 


134 


NEW STREAMS 


ceive the repentant, and to begin in him and with 
him that forgiveness of sins which will not end till 
he is presented faultless before the throne of God’s 
grace without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. 

* 

* * 

The attraction which Christ had for sinners was 
his profound sympathy for them, and his authori¬ 
tative declaration of forgiveness to them. The 
sympathy without the authority would have been 
valueless; the authority without the sympathy re¬ 
pellent. He who denounces sinners will never 
draw men to him; he who excuses sinners will 
draw them even less. He who profoundly feels 
their unuttered and often unrealized burdens, who 
makes them feel the burden of their own sin, and 
then, with authority, declares the forgiveness and 
remission of their sins, will always have the sinners 
and publicans draw near to him. If our Protest¬ 
antism is weak, and our churches half-full and our 
pulpits paralyzed, it is not for want of scholarship, 
or oratorical device, or soundness in doctrine; it is 
because the ministry fail either in a profound sense 
of human sinfulness and the heart sorrow it entails, 
or an in authoritative and positive faith in the for¬ 
giveness of sins and the life everlasting. 

* 

* * 

God does pardon; and he pardons freely. I do 
not say that he leaves no penalty to follow trans¬ 
gression repented of, but I do say that he provides 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


135 


remedial measures which begin to operate as soon 
as the sinner ceases to sin. The broken link knits 
together again ; the wound heals; impaired diges¬ 
tion begins recovery as soon as the dyspeptic gives 
it a fair chance. These are prophecies of redemp¬ 
tion. The fact transcends all prophecy; and that 
fact is this, that when a man looks back upon a 
wasted hour, or day, or life ; when, suffering the 
penalty of his own wrong-doing, he says from his 
heart, I suffer justly for my misdeeds ; when, look¬ 
ing at the divine life and death of the Crucified 
One, he longs to be borne in his memory and to be¬ 
come sharer in his kingdom, a kingdom not of 
jeweled walls and golden streets and sounding 
harps and singing angels, but of divine suffering, 
serving, ennobling love, that unfeigned turning 
away from the miserable past, that genuine longing 
for a nobler, diviner future, suffices; whatever the 
hour, or day, or life has been, God’s mercy is ready 
to help such a soul, to bury the past and to give 
hope and life for the future ; and whatever the 
hour, or day, or life has been, to the soul that is 
self-satisfied and wants no help to a future that is 
better than the past, no help is proffered because 
none is possible. 

* 

*• * 

It cannot be true that Christ died to induce a 
reluctant God to forgive; nor to enable a God 
bound hand and foot by his own laws to forgive ; 
nor as a dramatic spectacle to exert a moral influ- 


136 


NEW STREAMS 


ence upon mankind, that they might be induced to 
accept his forgiveness. The passion of the Son of 
God is a revelation in time of an eternal fact. The 
Lamb of God is a Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world ; the Sin-bearer is an eternal Sin-bearer; 
the heart of Christ is a revelation of the heart of 
God, and he who bore the sins of the world upon 
his heart until it broke and gave him release from 
the slow agony of the cross, bears them still, and 
will bear them until sin shall be no more. 

* 

* # 

Ministry is service; to minister is to serve; he 
who ministers with Christianly sympathy is one 
of Christ’s ministers. We cannot all be great 
teachers, nor all great physicians; but we can all 
find some place where we can serve the needy in 
their need; and he who does this, in it following 
Christ, whatever that service is, may say with 
Christ, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; 
for he hath anointed me also to preach good tid¬ 
ings to the poor, release to the captives, sight to 
the blind, liberty to the bruised, and the acceptable 
year of the Lord to his suffering children. 

* 

* * 

We follow Christ as every ship that crossed the 
ocean from Spain to America followed Columbus, 

marking none the less a pathway for itself_each 

going in its own course, yet each following to a 
common goal, lie came to give life, and for life 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


137 


there must be individuality. He makes us live, 
not only by the example he gives us, not directing 
us to hew ourselves to a precise and particular 
pattern, but by showing us how every man may be 
his own best self. 

* 

* * 

To love Christ, to revere Christ, to follow Christ, 
to make Christ the interpretation of the invisible 
and eternal —- this is religion ; not to take a tape 
measure and go round about God and Christ and 
the Holy Spirit and measure them and declare 
their equality or their inequality. 

* 

* * 

It is a blessed thing to perpetuate one’s name, 
but it is a far more blessed thing to perpetuate 
one’s work. 

* 

* * 

All is Christ’s. There is no fraction, large or 
small, that I am to give to him. All is his already, 
whether it be money, or time, or talents. There is 
not a certain proportion which I may use for my¬ 
self, and a certain other proportion which I must 
reserve for him or his church. I have no right to 
any of it; I have a right to all of it. It is none of 
it mine, because it is all his; it is all of it mine, 
because it is all his, and I am his. I have no ques¬ 
tion to settle what is mine and what is his; I have 
only the question to settle, which can never be 
settled by any mathematical or mechanical division, 


138 


NEW STREAMS 


how I can best use it for his service; how much, 
for his sake, should go into my work, how much 
into my home, how much into general philanthropic 
or Christian organizations. And this is a question 
which each man must decide for himself, and in 
each day for itself. 

* 

* * 

Whenever we are doing for Christ, Christ is do¬ 
ing for us. We get nearest to Christ when we are 
suffering with him; next nearest when we are 
working with him. It is loneliness in work that 
makes work hard. The solitary worker is a sad 
worker. He who works with Christ is never soli¬ 
tary and never need be sad. Work then becomes 
a privilege and a joy. 

* 

* * 

No one truly follows Christ who does not desire 
to make disciples for Christ; who does not watch 
for opportunity to do so. Whoever is doing so, 
however poorly, is a better follower of Christ than 
he who is not trying to do so at all. 


To be religious is not to be a seer of visions and 
a dreamer of dreams. It is not to be a dweller on 
the Mount of Transfiguration. It is not to be rapt 
in sweet and serene meditation. It is to be your¬ 
self; and, being yourself, to take the nature which 
God has given you, and"use it in his service by 
using it for your fellowmen. “He that hath my 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


139 


commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that 
loveth me.” We all know the Twenty-third 
Psalm : The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not 
want; and he that can sing it with glistening eyes 
counts himself religious. But the Twenty-fourth 
Psalm we do not know so well: 

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, 

Or who shall stand in his holy place? 

He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. 

Who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity, 

Or sworn deceitfully. 

But it is more difficult to live the Twenty-fourth 
Psalm than to sing the Twenty-third; and it is 
just as religious. 

* 

* * 

Obstacles are never a divine indication that God 
would have a work abandoned. Work exists for 
the sake of the worker, and obstacles are at once 
the test and the development of his courage. No 
hindrance need daunt a soul which has courage 
and hope, and he who is working with God and 
for God will not cease from his work because his 
way seems blocked. 

* 

* * 

You want to know God. You are spending your 
time in studying about God. You are attempting 
to come to him in a wrong way. God is love; and 
only love knows love. You are trying to know 
love by intellectual processes. Try to reproduce 


140 


NEW STREAMS 


God. Try to reproduce Christ. Study his life, 
that yours may he a life like his. Follow him. In 
following him the glory of his life will he mani¬ 
fested to you. In ceasing to learn about God you 
will learn God himself. God is found hy following, 
not hy searching; or, if hy searching, hy heart¬ 
searching. “ If ye seek me with your whole heart, 
ye shall find me.” 

* 

* *- 

Have you ever stood in that wonderful Cha- - 
mounix Yallev and looked out on that snowy dome 
rising above it, and bowed in awe and reverence 
before it as before grander cathedral than ever 
human hands did fashion ? Have you ever stood 
on the deck of a great steamer while the wind has 
howled about it and the waves have threatened to 
engulf it, and you have seen your steamer plung¬ 
ing like a duck down one hillside and clambering 
slowly up the other, and felt the grandeur of the 
storm and of the ocean ? Have you ever ridden 
out alone upon a great prairie, shutting yourself off 
from all signs of civilization, and looked off on the 
broad expanse where it has seemed as if you were 
in the heart of a limitless expanse, and measurablv 
understood the meaning of the word infinite ? 
Have you looked up into the starry vault of a 
winter’s night and whispered softly to yourself, 
“ When I consider the heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast 
ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


141 


him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” 
Oh ! grand is the mountain with its snowy dome; 
grand the ocean with its voice of thunder; grand 
the prairie with its illimitable expanse; grand the 
heavens with its starry vault; but grander than 
them all is the face of a babe that looks up out of 
laughing eyes and cooing voice into the mother’s 
face; because in the babe is soul. For when the 
mountain shall have crumbled into dust, and when 
the ocean shall have forgotten to sing its choral, 
when the prairie shall have been swept with a fire 
from which there is no recovery, and the very 
heavens shall have been rolled together as a scroll, 
that laughing babe will still live on. If in the 
mountain, the prairie, the ocean, the heavens, we 
see our God, oh ! how dull of vision are we if we do 
not see our God in human kind. 

* 

* * 

Humanity is not a mere heap of sand upon the 
seashore. Life is not a mere set of separated and 
individual sounds. There is an orchestra playing, 
and there is a Leader somewhere. There is a tem¬ 
ple building and there is an Architect somewhere. 
* 

* * 

In the sculptor’s studio the sculptor is at work 
with the plastic clay modeling the form, and his 
pupils are watching how he does it, and trying to 
imitate him. It is a little parable. God is still 
making men of clay, but breathing life into the 


142 


NEW STREAMS 


clay as no sculptor does, that we may work and 
love and be bound together in a brotherhood. To 
us he says, “You may help. Nay, I will stand 
back, and let you do it, and I will show you how.” 

* 

* * 

Did you ever try to develop a photograph? Did 
you ever stand in the dark-room and put the glass 
on which you had taken your picture in the little 
tray and look at it? There is absolutely nothing 
there; it is as blank as when you put it in the 
camera. And you pour the preparation over it, 
and wash it back and forth. And now, watch! 
yes! there comes a line, there a line; there, that is 
the porch! Yes, that is the tree; yes, yes! there 
is mother! I can see mother. It is coming out! it is 
coming out! Ah, my friends, that is what God 
is doing with us. He takes a human soul in which 
you and I cannot see anything, and it is a wonder 
he can, and he bathes it and watches it, and one 
lineament after another of divinity come out in the 
human soul. And by and by, when his work of 
development is done, God will stand in the picture, 
for you are the sons of God. 

* 

* *- 

Yesterday a friend took an opal and pressed it 
in his palm and held it there for a few moments, 
and then took it out and showed it to me, and it 
was all flashing with light and with color from the 
heart of it. So God takes you and me, poor stones 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


143 


with no light or life in us, and he holds us in his 
palm, and he presses us to his heart, and then takes 
us, as it were, away from him for the moment, and 
out from us there flash patience and courage and 
hope and love which his heart and his warmth 
have put into us. They will die and be forgotten, 
but the great hand that holds and the great heart 
that presses and the great soul that inspires will 
not die and will not be forgotten. The grass with- 
ereth and the flower fadeth, but the word of our 
God endureth forever. 

* 

* * 

We do not create powers, we find them; they 
are divine powers, and we lay hold on them, use 
them, and bring them into our service. As we 
understand God and obey God we are served by 
God. All art in all its various forms has this 
divine unity, and through all artists this divine 
voice speaks and this divine glory manifests itself. 
There are laws of harmony in music, which existed 
before the musician discovered them; laws of har¬ 
mony in art, which antedate all painting and sculp¬ 
ture. The artist does not invent; he discovers. 
The musician does not create; he finds. His music 
must be according to musical laws that existed 
before ever he learned in the cradle to hear sweet 
sounds; his art creations must be obedient to art 
laws that existed before ever the mountains were 
sculptured in forms of grandeur or the hills tapes¬ 
tried with velvet and embroidered with flowers : 


144 


NEW STREAMS 


or he is no musician, no artist. Have you ever 
played the game in which you spell out a word 
with a dozen letters each on a little card, then mix 
up, and hand them to your friend, and he takes 
those letters, and out of them tries to spell the 
word that was in your mind before. So God plays 
with us. One artist picks out one letter, another 
a second, a third a third. Each one is but a frag¬ 
ment of art. Raphael puts his letter down, Thor- 
waldsen his, Church or Inn ess his; and so one 
artist after another and one school after another 
put their letters down ; and when it is all down, 
and not before, we shall know what beauty is. 
For beauty is the divine ideal, and all schools of 
artists are but spelling it out; and every great 
artist is a flash of God on this dull earth of ours. 

* 

* * 

We talk of the forces of nature. There are no 
forces of nature. There is one great force, and all 
manifestations of force in nature are the outcrop¬ 
pings of that one infinite force. Not the sun in 
the heavens, not yonder comet coming in God’s 
appointed track toward us — not more do they 
manifest the power of God than the least and 
smallest movement of life in the least and smallest 
twig or leaf or bush. It is not only the blazing 
bush that marks holy ground; every phenomenon of 
nature bears its witness to the mysterious energy that 
is behind phenomena and is revealing itself therein. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


145 


The relation of God to creation is not that of a 
maker to the made, it is that of the life-giver to 
the living organism. Creation is a body, God is 
the spirit, the intelligence, the will. He pervades 
nature as the spirit of man prevades his body. 
What we call the laws of nature are the muscles 
by which he acts upon inert matter, and gives to 
it the semblance of spontaneous life; what we call 
the uniformity of nature is but the habit of divine 
action. The falling apple, the running stream, the 
flying cloud, the summer breeze and the winter 
wind are all the exponents and manifestation of 
the divine will. The thunderbolt is not the tick¬ 
ing of a clock which God has wound up and set in 
motion; it is the voice of God himself; the winds 
are not the pufling of a bellows or the play of a 
gigantic fan which he with divine ingenuity has 
contrived and set in motion ; it is the movement of 
his will, the manifestion of his personality. Do 
you say this is pantheism ? No, this is not panthe¬ 
ism. Pantheism is, God is all, and all is God. 
This doctrine is, God is in all, and in all is God. 
As materialism denies that there is any spirit in 
the body, and attributes thought and emotion to 
the material organism, so pantheism denies that 
there is any spirit in nature, and counts the crea¬ 
tion identical with the creator. As spiritualism 
recognizes in the body the invisible and masterful 
spirit which animates and controls it, so Christian 
theism recognizes in all of nature the divine and 


146 


NEW STREAMS 


masterful spirit which dwells in and manifests itself 
through nature. This conception of creation as 
the body in which the Creator lives, and through 
which the Creator manifests himself, is against all 
scientific theorizing, but against it there is not one 
single scientific fact. 

* 

* * 

Redemption is within, not without. It is healing. 
* 

* * 

Many of Christ’s miracles are microcosms, in 
which the eternal Mercy illustrates its methods and 
results in a narrow sphere and in a single life. 
Redemption is brought within a horizon the whole 
of which the eye takes in at a glance. What the 
Eternal Love is doing throughout the ages for the 
whole race he illustrates by what he does in a 
brief moment and for a single soul. 

* 

* * 

As every instrument in the great orchestra is at 
its best when all the instruments combine in one 
exquisite harmony, as soprano and alto and tenor 
and bass each does its best work while combining 
to make one great, indistinguishable chorus, so 
every idiosyncrasy and every nature and every 
temperament will be at its highest and its best 
when you and I join soul with soul and heart with 
heart and life with life in that great love song — 
“ To him that hath loved us and redeemed us.” 
What are all the love-songs of love compared to 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


147 


that love-song with which we are to greet the vic¬ 
tor when he returns from his conquering and takes 
us to himself to be his own ? 

* 

# * 

It is not the omniscience of God nor the omnipo¬ 
tence of God that seems most unfathomable to me, 
but his mercy, his sympathy, his love; the sym¬ 
pathy, the love of a God who is in such touch with 
humanity that we never commit a sin that he does 
not feel the shame of it, and we never feel a re¬ 
morse that the bitterness of it does not enter into 
him, and we never know a sorrow that he does not 
sit down with us in our grief, and we are never 
lifted up with a great joy, that he is not joyful 
also. For not by the suffering only but by the joy 
also, by the whole entering of God into human 
life, his life becomes our life, and we are made 
partakers of his nature, because he comes down 
and makes himself partaker with us of our lives. 

* 

* * 

A weak will is one thing, and an obedient will is 
another and a very different thing. To be a Chris¬ 
tian is to take the divine will as your will. 

* 

* * 

As a teacher trains his pupils to the use of lan¬ 
guage and gives to them a wealth of thought and 
skill in expression, so that gradually, through all 
the stages of intellectual poverty and blundering 
grammar and pronunciation, they grope their way 


148 


NEW STREAMS 


toward his scholarship, so God in his world, God in 
Christ, God entering humanity through him who 
called himself the door, is training humanity through 
the centuries to think his thoughts after him. 

* 

* * 

I remember once sailing over the crystal waters 
of Lake Superior. We had come out of the muddy 
waters of Lake Huron during the night, and early 
in the morning I came on deck, and looking over 
the prow, started back in instinctive terror, for, 
looking down into the clear waters of that lake it 
seemed to me as though our keel was just going to 
strike on the sharp pointed rocks below; but I was 
looking through fifty or sixty feet of clear water 
at the great rock bed of the lake over which we 
were sailing. Now we endeavor in vain to fathom 
God’s judgment. As by a great deep it is hidden 
from us. But by and by the sea will grow clear 
as crystal, and through the mystery we shall see 
and shall understand ; we shall know not only the 
life that was in the ocean, but shall trace the foot¬ 
prints of Him that walked thereon. 

* 

* * 

It is often very hard to determine what the 
Christ-will for us is in detail. . . . There are 

some people, indeed, who think God always tells 
them; the sign-posts are always legible. It is not 
so in my experience. I cannot always decipher 
the sign-posts and must make my way as best I 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


149 


can through the forest. I am not sure whether to 
take the right-hand road or the left. I am not 
sure which is the divine will. I cannot always 
tell. But one thing Paul knew; he knew that 
God’s will for him was that he should become like 
Christ. . . . The one aim always before him 

was this ; not to get somewhere, but to be some¬ 
body, and that somebody like Christ. 

* 

* * 

A devout and godly submission does not require 
us to accept disaster because it appears to be the 
will of God. It is our business to take care of the 
interests which God has reposed in our hands, and 
to use every energy and activity in their protection, 
and to submit only when a power higher than our 
own and a wisdom greater than our own inter¬ 
venes to overrule our endeavors. 

* 

It is not merely intelligent faith which Christ 
accepts, but faith of any kind, even though it be 
mated to and marred by superstition. The mis¬ 
taken reverence which trusts to the hem of Christ’s 
garment is better than the supercilious wisdom 
which rejects Christ himself. 

* 

* * 

There is a spirit of faith which believes that God 
is going to execute our will. It is not our will that 
the nation should be destroyed; we will trust God 
that it shall not be. This is spurious faith. There 


150 


NEW STREAMS 


is another spirit which believes that God is going 
to execute his own will, and trusts him to do it. 
It is not our will that the nation should be de¬ 
stroyed ; but we will trust him to destroy it or to 
preserve it as he sees best. That is genuine faith. 
It is the faith which accompanies a sincere desire 
that we may do God’s will, not a wish that he 
would do ours; that says calmly, even in the hour 
of disaster and defeat, The cup that my Father 
giveth me, shall I not drink it? This spirit, at 
every step of the way, seeks to know the will of 
God and to do it; it obeys, sometimes with blind¬ 
ness substituting the letter for the spirit, sometimes 
with fanaticism mistaking the voice of self-will for 
the voice of God ; yet always truly seeking to un¬ 
derstand, and earnestly endeavoring to do accord¬ 
ing to all that is commanded by the will of God. 
It was this spirit that transformed Oliver Crom¬ 
well’s mob of tapsters and serving men into the 
irresistible Ironsides. 

* 

* * 

There is a blindness of soul as well as of eye. 
I have stood in my bay-window by the side of a 
blind man, who had been educated to be an artist, 
but had lost his sight, and have described to him 
the mountains and the river and the city in the 
background, and the Erie Yalley with the smoke 
of the distant train, and have realized, as his face 
lighted up at my poor word picture, that many a 
man with good eyes had stood there who was 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


151 


blinder than he. Men with eyes who can see no 
beauty in a Church or a Bierstadt are blind; so 
are men who can see no God in the mountain, the 
river, the ocean, the flower, the bird, or the flow 
and current of human life. Christ gives a new 
sense to the soul when he makes faith to see, for 
faith is the eye that sees spiritual things — it is 
“ the evidence of things unseen.” 

* 

* *■ 

Faith casts out the world’s evils; faith speaks in 
the world with a new eloquence; faith affords to 
its possessor a divine protection ; and faith is the 
perfect medicine for every heart sickness and heart 
sorrow. 

* 

* * 

It is the duty of every generation to live for the 
generation which is to follow; to lay foundations 
below the frost-line for future building; to con¬ 
struct, so far as they go, so solidly and surely that 
there shall be no fall to whelm their children in 
ruin. Selfish faith is always a spurious faith. The 
faith which is content to save itself and leave the 
rest of humanity and the future uncared for is no 
true faith, and deserves to be scourged out of human 
hearts wherever and however it shows itself. 

* 

* * 

Faith is the inspiration of the highest heroism, 
and the State has no nobler record of true heroes 
than that which the Church of Christ possesses. 


152 


NEW STREAMS 


To be a Christian is to be a man, and to be an un¬ 
manly Christian is as much a contradiction in terms 

as to be an unloving one. 

* 

* # 

Desire God-ward is faith. Begin with it. 

* 

* * 

Faith in a mother’s love is not a creed; it comes 
not through argument; electricity does not leap 
so quickly from one battery to another, when the 
broken wire is reunited, as love leaps in the heart 
to answer to the throb of love in another heart. 
To have faith in Christ is not to entertain any 
opinion about him; it is to look upon his life, so 
heroic, so self-sacrificing, so true, so tender, so glo¬ 
rious in all the glory of an unselfish love, and, 
looking, to worship and to desire with unutterable 
longings to attain a life radiant with something of 
the same light. Faith thrusts no hand in the side, 
puts no finger in the nail-wounds; it looks into the 
eyes of love, and yields to their sweet influence. 
A man may believe the whole Nicene creed about 
Christ and have not one jot or tittle of faith in him. 
He may have faith in him, and yet be doubtful in 
his ignorance whether he be a reality or an ideal. 

* 

* * 

There is a great difference between faith and 
belief; the one is a spiritual, the other is an in¬ 
tellectual action. The New Testament measures 
men by their faith, never by their beliefs. Belief 


IN OLD CHANNELS . 


153 


reaches an opinion on consideration of evidence 
and by the deductions of reason; faith perceives 
truth on the mere presentation of it. Belief is a 
conclusion, faith is a perception. 

% 

* * 

Faith is the recuperating power of God in the 
human soul and it works its mission of mercy by 
contact. Men are not recovered from sin by wise 
counsels, or aroused fears, or stimulated hopes, but 
by personal sympathy. Faith in your heart going 
out and touching another heart starts the germ of 
faith therein. He that carries to diseased natures 
the ministry of faith carries to them the power of 
God; for by faith he carries God himself. But it 
is only faith which has this power of touch ; even 
philanthropic kindliness of heart, human sympathy, 
yearning desire, are powerless unless all these are 
suffused with that strange, mystic, divine life which 
comes from God in the heart. 

* 

* * 

The faith that waits for God to work is spurious; 
the faith that works with God is genuine. 

* 

* * 

The proper method of dealing with and curing 
honest superstition, the Christ-like method, is not 
by attacking it but by encouraging the faith from 
which it proceeds, and directing that faith from the 
material object to the living Christ. The woman 
who kneels on the cold stone door of the cathedral, 


154 


NEW STREAMS 


and lifts her streaming eyes to the ill-painted Vir¬ 
gin or the ill-carved crucifix, and counts her beads 
in a sincere and yet half-despairing hope that she 
may find mercy for her sins, help in her trouble, 
and comfort in her sorrow, presses forward to 
touch the hem of Christ’s garment. We push her 
back, scorning her superstition; Christ gives her 
the comfort she hungers for, the help she needs, 
the pardon she seeks, and bids her go in peace, 
and, if not on earth, then hereafter in Heaven she 
will learn to transfer her streaming eyes from 
the ill-painted canvas and the ill-carved wood to 
the Christ himself whom they both symbolize ; will 
learn that it was no touch of the garment hem that 
healed her, but the will and love of the living 
Christ. 

* 

* * 

Father and mother and group of children are 
traveling across the prairie, and are caught with a 
pitiless snowstorm ; they struggle a little while; 
the father makes a rude tent of the buffalo robes; 
they creep under it for shelter, and wait, wonder¬ 
ing whether they wait for death or for rescue ; and 
while they are there, and the cold is creeping on 
them, and death, there comes pushing his way 
through the snow and the drifts one who calls out 
to them with cheery voice: “ The village is only a 
mile away ! Make your choice of the child that I 
shall take and carry to the village ; I have come 
out from the village; I heard of you there, and 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


155 


have come to find you and rescue you; I cannot 
take but one at a time ; give me the one, quick! 
and I will come back for the others.” And the 
mother presses the child to her own arms, and gives 
him one long kiss, and then surrenders him to the 
stranger, and he bears the child away. He does 
not think perhaps there is a village a mile or two 
away ; he knows ; he has come from it; and though 
he is a stranger, and though still her heart is full 
of anxious foreboding until she meets her child 
again, she trusts. So to us in this world, beset and 
storm-pressed, He that comes to us comes from 
that world which he himself knows; He is not one 
of ourselves, who says, “ I think there is rescue the 
other side of the grave.” He has come into life; 
and bears his witness that there is light and life 
and shelter and home beyond, and says, “ Give 
your loved one to me, and go with radiant face 
because one at least is safe.” 

# * 

On earth our best music is dissonant; for our in¬ 
strument is sadly out of tune. To die is to be set 
in tune to God’s eternal keynote — love. It is to 
come into harmony with one’s self, and therefore 
with God ; it is to come into harmony with God, 
and therefore with one’s self. 

* 

* # 

Resurrection is a continuous fact. God does 
not by and by create a spiritual body. There is a 


156 


NEW STREAMS 


spiritual body. In every death there is a resur¬ 
rection ; from every death-bed an ascension. To 
depart is to be with Christ, not with the worms. 
Not in some far future epoch, after a long and 
dreary sleep, but to-day is the departing soul with 
its Lord in Paradise. 

* 

* * 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ seems to me, 
on the whole, the best attested fact of ancient his¬ 
tory ; but the character of Jesus Christ does not 
depend upon it. We believe in the resurrection 
because we believe in Christ, not in Christ because 
we believe in the resurrection. 

* 

* * 

The tomb of Christ was the cradle of Chris¬ 
tianity. If there had been no risen Redeemer there 
could have been no victorious religion. Chris¬ 
tianity dates from the day Christ rose from the 
tomb. Easter is the birthday of the Church. The 
first day of the week is legitimately and properly 
our great gala day. 

* 

* * 

If you take out of Christianity the doctrine of 
the resurrection you take out its vital part. You 
may pluck out a miracle here and there you may 
think Christ did not walk on the water, or that he 
did not feed the five thousand, and still retain the 
heart and essence of the Gospel. But you cannot 
close the tomb of the dead Christ and leave him 


W OLD CHANNELS. 


157 


there, and not take out of the religion of Christ 
the very heart and life that has moved the world. 
This has brought man and God together for eighteen 
centuries. This true atonement has been wrought, 
not by something that occurred eighteen centuries 
ago, hut by a living Christ, dwelling in the heart 
of his church, in the hearts of the children of men. 
Whatever denies this resurrection gives us for a 
living Christ an embalmed corpse; for a hope and 
a power it would substitute a memory and a 
grief. 

* 

* * 

The belief that “ the bodies do rest in their graves 
till the resurrection ” is contradicted by our daily 
observation; we see them exhumed from their 
graves by the irresistible and blessed power of Na¬ 
ture ; we see them absorbed and transformed into 
new forms of beauty and of life; we see them 
wafted on the wings of the wind as dust. Gathered 
together again for resurrection they may be, by 
some fiat of the Almighty; rest in their graves till 
the resurrection they evidently do not. But the 
doctrine that Christ ascended into heaven with 
flesh and bones, the doctrine that the dead rise at 
the last day with the “ self-same bodies and none 
other,” I believe to be a graft of paganism budded 
with many another pagan notion on Christian the¬ 
ology ; I believe that its seeds are to be found in 
the tombs of Eg} r pt, not in the grave of Christ; I 
believe it is a prolific source of false doctrine and 


158 


NEW STREAMS 


cruel comfort. It carries with it the notion of a 
physical heaven and a physical hell; it has given 
rise to a doctrine of purgatory and all the priestly 
machinery that accompanies it; it buries the heart 
of the afflicted in the grave; it postpones hope to 
a remote and indefinite future; it habituates us, in 
the hours when we stand consciously nearest eter¬ 
nity, not to look with Paul upon the things that 
are unseen and eternal, but with the pagan upon 
the things that are seen and temporal. 

* 

# * 

The world’s birth dates from Christ’s resurrection. 

* * 

* 

But for myself, I do not believe that for the 
children of God there is any dark Underworld, any 
Place of the Dead, any Hades, any Intermediate 
State. I read in the language of the New Testa¬ 
ment, not an indorsement of this belief, but a cor¬ 
rection of it. I believe that he who has found 
Christ has found eternal life; that he has passed 
from death unto life; that he will not come into 
judgment; that when he departs it is to be with 
Christ; that when Christ comes, he will come with 
him in glory; that when Christ judges the world, 
he will sit with him on his judgment throne; that 
he who liveth and believeth in Christ can never 
die — death hath no dominion over him. Martha 
still weeps at the grave of her dead brother, vainly 
attempting to assuage her grief by the remote hope 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


159 


that “ he shall rise again in the resurrection at the 
Last Day;” Christ still stands beside her, unrecog¬ 
nized through her tears, and says to her: “I am 
the Resurrection and the Life; he that liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die.” 

* 

* * 

As I read the New Testament, there is to the 
believer no break in the continuity of life; no 
“ long and dreary sleep ; ” no waiting for a future 
and far-off resurrection ; no “ happy land, far, far 
away;” no further use for this lame, blind, deaf, 
ailing, sick body after it is laid away in the grave; 
no conceivable use in preserving it by embalming, 
or stone sarcophagus, or iron casket, or closed 
tomb. 

It is the soldier’s tent; his campaign is over; 
he is at home ; and the sooner it is made over 
into some new and valuable thing the better. It 
is the immigrant’s wagon; he has reached his 
destination ; the wagon has served its purpose, but 
its journeys have come to an end. Knock it to 
pieces and turn its material to good account. Of 
the resurrection of this body, corrupt, decaying, 
evanescent, the Bible gives no hint; on the con¬ 
trary, it repudiates it in strongest terms. When 
the death-angel appears to the disciple, saying, 
“Follow me,” the chains fall off from the long- 
fettered soul; he carries not a link of them away 
to encumber his future freedom. 


160 


NEW STREAMS 


Hope of immortality never painted a rainbow 
of promise on pagan tears. It never engraved a 
motto of hope on a pagan tombstone. There are 
isolated verses in the Old Testament which indicate 
that occasional prophets of Israel, in moments of 
supreme inspiration, experienced a momentary hope 
respecting the future ; but these isolated utterances 
are like gleams of sunshine breaking through a 
tempestuous sky, while the wind still sweeps 
through the skeleton trees, and the rain still falls 
in dreary torrents. There is not a patch of blue 
sky—no, not even in the Psalms of sanguine David 
or the visions of inspired Isaiah. Christ’s resur¬ 
rection brought life and immortality to light. It 
converted the fabric of a dream into an historic 
reality; it transformed a despairing hope into a 
calm assurance. To the believer in Christ’s resur¬ 
rection, immortality is no longer a hope. He looks 
in through the open door and sees the world of 
light beyond. Once every voyager on the un¬ 
known sea was a Columbus, setting sail for he 
knew not what. Now every Christian voyager is 
an emigrant starting out for an Eldorado; know¬ 
ing that it exists, only not knowing what wealth 
of possibilities it contains. “ For now is Christ 
risen, and become the first fruits of them that 
slept.” 

* 

* * 

We believe in our immortality not because the 
arguments addressed to us prove it; but, as the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


161 


bird believes in its power to soar in invisible air 
even before its wings are fledged, so we feel within 
ourselves the consciousness that in our souls there 
is the power of flight that shall show itself when 
once the cage door is opened and we are allowed 
to fly out from behind our prison bars. 

* 

* * 

A pestilence broods over a great city with its dark 
wings, and every night the husband goes to his 
cottage home wondering whether he may not find 
that the fatal destroyer has entered there, and the 
wife that he left blooming in the morning he may 
find stricken at night. One evening he comes, and 
the house is closed, and the windows dark, and he 
knocks and there is no answer, and he rings and 
he gets no response, and his heart sinks within him 
as he thinks that she is stricken and is gone. But, 
as he looks and watches, suddenly he discerns on 
the door, in the darkening twilight, a little paper 
pinned, and he plucks it off, and opens it, and reads 
it, and it brings him a message from his wife — 
“ Some one has come for me, and taken me up into 
the mountains, where there is no malaria, where 
there is no disease, where there is no danger; I 
am safe there, and the means are here for you to 
follow me.” And how the heart and the life 
springs again to his cheek, and the bitter sorrow 
turns into an exhilaration, an ecstasy, a joy! So 
we come to the house that held our beloved. It is 


162 


NEW STREAMS 


dark, and out of the windows that shone with the 
light of love, no light is shining. We are heart¬ 
broken ; until we turn and find here this word 
brought to us : “ That loved one has gone to the 
mountains, where there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor 
temptation, nor disease, bat the eternal flowers and 
the everlasting sunlight; follow thou on.” Oh! it 
is not strange that in the heart of man, where be¬ 
fore there was only the throb of anguish, and into 
the lips of men, where before there was only the 
long, long wail of sorrow, this message of the ever¬ 
lasting Christ has put the throb of exhilaration and 
the song of triumph. It is not strange that we 
have learned to hang upon our doors no crape, but 
flowers. 

* 

* * 

As the music in the soul of the organist is more 
than he can interpret on the keys, as the vision of 
the artist is more than he can embody on the can¬ 
vas or in the stone, as the dream of the poet is 
more than the words of the poem, so the life of 
the spirit is more than the interpretation of that 
life in words or deeds. The body is a cage; the 
cage laments the bird, but the bird does not lament 
the cage. No wonder that the flesh fights hard to 
keep its inmate within its walls; for when the 
spirit is gone the body is naught. When the glory 
departs, the tabernacle becomes a common tent, 
and is straightway taken down. But to be free 
from the perpetual decay of the earthly tabernacle, 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


163 


to be released from its pains and its infirmities, to 
be emancipated from its clogs and its incumbrances, 
to have the chrysalis break and the winged soul 
let loose — this hour of freedom is not to be dreaded 
before it comes, nor mourned afterward; but to be 
rejoiced in. Self sits by the tenantless prison cell 
and mourns; but love looks up and is glad that the 
prisoner has escaped into the liberty of the sons 
of God. 

% 

* * 

I would not if I could comprehend the awful 
mystery of eternal death. I am more than content, 
as a little child, to leave the eternal future with my 
Heavenly Father, meanwhile warning every man to 
beware of the delusive hope which suffers him to 
postpone repentance till to-morrow, and refusing 
to burden myself with the intolerable horror of a 
kingdom of darkness, and night, and sin, as eternal 
as the kingdom of God and of his Christ. 

* 

* * 

Except two, or at most three, passages in the 
Gospels and a few enigmatical symbols in that most 
enigmatical book, the Revelation of St. John, I 
find nothing in the New Testament to warrant the 
terrible opinion that God sustains the life of his 
creatures throughout eternity only that they may 
continue in sin and misery. That immortality is 
the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
man is mortal a»d must put on immortality, that 


164 


NEW STREAMS 


only he can put it on who becomes through Christ 
a partaker of the divine nature, and so an inher¬ 
itor of him “ who only hath immortality,” that 
eternal life is life eternal, and eternal death is 
death eternal, and everlasting destruction is des¬ 
truction without remedy or hope of restoration — 
this is the most natural, as it is the simplest read¬ 
ing of the New Testament. 

# 

* # 

We sail upon an ocean whose further bounds are 
far beyond our sight. The Bible gives every soul 
a course to sail by. Follow this course, it says, 
and you will reach harbor; follow any other, and 
you will come to shipwreck. But what that harbor 
is, and what possibilities of rescue at the last from 
shipwreck there may be, it tells not. The wise 
father neither promises nor threatens ; he leaves 
his children to understand that obedience brings 
happiness, disobedience suffering. God governs 
his children as a wise father; and to all our ques¬ 
tionings, What pay for doing right ? What pen¬ 
alty for doing wrong ? keeps a silence that is 
more eloquent than speech. The Bible contains 
no clear revelation respecting the nature of either 
eternal life or eternal death. It discloses noth¬ 
ing to curiosity. We can gather from its intima¬ 
tions some probable conclusions ; but every kind 
of dogmatism respecting the eternal future is 
un-Scriptural. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


165 


The moments are not wasted that are spent in 
oiling the machinery of life, and there is no such 
lubrication of life’s complaining joints as pure 
devotion. 

* 

* * 

Devotion is the best preparation for labor. We 
should accomplish more if we worked less and 
prayed more. 

* 

* * 

Prayer is not a gymnastic exercise for the de¬ 
velopment of spiritual muscle. Prayer is the recog¬ 
nition of God ; it is the attitude of the soul that is 
ready, expectant, desirous of the Divine presence 
and love. It is the putting of the arms of the 
child round the Infinite Father’s neck. It is the 
caress of the babe; the lifting up of the lips to be 
kissed. 

* 

# # 

Prayer does not consist in asking for things; 
and answers to prayer do not come chiefly in the 
giving of things. 

* 

* * 

The spiritual prayer meeting is not a prayer 
meeting that is interesting or entertaining, but the 
prayer meeting that has in it the pulses of a spirit¬ 
ual life. 

# 

# * 

Prayer is fellowship with God; communion with 
him ; the meeting of spirit with spirit. Courage 
flows from the heart of God into that of man, and 


166 


NEW STREAMS 


strength to nerve his weakness, and hope to deliver 
him from despair, and comfort to make him strong 
to hear his burden. The Christian may doubt 
whether God gives things; but he cannot doubt 
that God gives himself. 

* 

* # * 

Did it never occur to you that if you do not hear 
God’s answer to prayer it may be not because he is 
dumb, but because you are deaf; not because he has 
no answer to give, but because you have not been 
listening for it that you might hear what that an¬ 
swer was? We are so busy with our service, so 
busy with our work, and sometimes so busy with 
our praying that it does not occur to us to stop our 
own talking and listen if God has some answer to 
give to us, with “ the still small voice; ” to be passive, 
to be quiet; to do nothing, say nothing, in some 
true sense think nothing, simply to be receptive 
and waiting for the voice. “Wait thou on God,” 
says the Psalmist, and “ Again wait thou on God.” 
* 

* * 

Blessed is he who, following Christ into Geth- 
semane, follows him out of it by the same door: 
the door of a supreme consecration to his Father’s 
will; the door of a prayer which seeks not to 
change the divine will to the human, but the hu¬ 
man will to the will divine ; a spirit of prayer 
which ushers the soul out of the darkness of dread 
and doubt into the glorious experience of him who 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


167 


rejoices in tribulation, knowing that tribulation 
worketh patience, and patience experience, and ex¬ 
perience a hope that can never make ashamed. 

* 

* * 

In our revolt from the Roman Catholic doctrine 
of a physical Real Presence, a literal body and a 
literal blood, some of us at least have made too lit¬ 
tle of the Communion which Christ appointed; too 
little of the real presence of Christ in the Com¬ 
munion. The Lord’s Supper is more than a mere 
monument, more than a mere memory; at least it 
may be more. The bread is not his body, and the 
wine is not his blood; but when, with loving, 
tender, yearning, desiring hearts, we sit down to 
break the bread in memory of him, he sits with us, 
and in such hours reveals himself to us with a reve¬ 
lation which has no parallel in any other phase of 
Christian experience. 

* 

* * 

We feed on Christ. As our food makes our 
bodies what they are, and becomes in us bone and 
flesh and sinew and blood ; as our intellectual food 
makes our minds what they are, coarse or refined, 
barbaric or cultured, disciplined or wild and riot¬ 
ous, so our spiritual companionship makes our 
spirits what they are. Christ is not merely a 
Teacher whose instructions we are to heed, not 
merely a Leader whose example we are to follow, 
not merely a Saviour whose love averts from us 


168 


NEW STREAMS 


dreaded and well-deserved penalty; he is a living 
Friend, in whom we live and move and have our 
being. “It is not enough for you to see the out¬ 
ward face of the Son of man, or hear his outward 
words, or touch his outward costume. That is not 
himself. It is not enough that you walk by his 
side, or hear others talk of him, or use terms of 
affection and endearment toward him. You must 
go deeper than this ; you must go to his very in¬ 
most heart, to the very core and marrow of his be¬ 
ing. You must not only read and understand, but 
you must mark, learn, and inwardly digest, and 
make part of yourselves that which alone can be 
part of the human spirit and conscience. 

This is the truth, the profound truth, which 
underlies the Lord’s Supper. 

* 

* * 

Unity to be lasting must be vital and spontane¬ 
ous. It must be a growth, not a manufacture. It 
must consist of real fellowship in thought and ex¬ 
perience, not of skillful evasion of issues in creeds 
and of glittering generalities in pronunciamentos. 
Paul has tersely expressed both the conditions of 
Church unity and the order in which the Church 
must pursue it: “ One Lord, one faith, one bap¬ 

tism.” A great deal of effort at unity is futile 
because it pursues a reverse order; endeavors to 
secure unity of symbol before there is unity either 
in religious experience or in the conception of God. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


169 


. . . Until the Church worships one Lord, and 

possesses one common experience, unity of symbol 
will be a sham ; and shams are always worse than 
useless, and never so bad as in the service of 
religion. 

* 

* * 

All the spiritual forces in the world which take 
on them the name of Christ that they may do 
Christ’s work are recognized by Christ as his. And 
to shut out from Christian sympathy any body of 
men, any moral, spiritual force, however imperfect, 
however inadequate, however ill-advised in their 
methods, if they have in them these two marks, 
loyalty to Christ and the accomplishment of Christ’s 
mission in the world, is to shut out from our hearts 
those to whom Christ opens his. 

* 

* * 

Some men climb up to God by the ladder which 
ever since Jacob’s dream has been seen reaching 
from earth to heaven—climbing more easily be¬ 
cause on rounds on which their fathers have as¬ 
cended ; some men wing their way to God as the 
bird flies upward, by a path which it makes for 
itself, a path no other bird ever traversed. In the 
ideal church of the future there will be place for 
both the ladder of prayer and the flight of prayer. 
* 

* * 

Man is made in the image of God. All that is 
in man that is not in God’s image does not belong 


170 


NEW STREAMS 


to man’s nature. Natural depravity? There is no 
natural depravity. Depravity is unnatural. De¬ 
pravity is contra-natural. It is against the whole law 
of man’s being. It is never wrong for any creature 
to act out the nature which God endowed him 
with. It is not wicked for a tiger to be ravening. 
It is not wicked for a snake to be sinuous. It is 
wicked for man to be ravening or sinuous, because 
it is against the divine nature that God has put in 
man. He made man for better tilings. 

* 

* * 

We try to build our faith on our feelings; but 
feelings are always the blossom of faith. Dr. 
Malan’s illustration of this truth is admirable. 
Napoleon is reviewing his troops; his horse breaks 
into a run, while his hands are engaged with his 
accouterments, and he cannot catch up the bridle. 
A private steps from the ranks, seizes the bridle, 
stops the horse. “Thank you, Captain,” says the 
“ Little Corporal.” “ Of what regiment, sire ? ” re¬ 
plies the private. This is faith. But we wait to 
have our epaulettes on before we believe in our 
commission. We should believe in the commis¬ 
sion, and therefore put on the epaulettes. 

* 

* * 

We destroy feeling when we analyze it, as the 
botanist destroys the flower when he picks it to 
pieces. But flowers will always mean more to 
him because he understands their nature; and feel- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


171 


ings will always be stronger and more healthful 
after they have been analyzed and their nature 
understood. 

* 

* * 

Skepticism is the highway of the world from 
ignorant to intelligent faith. We must put all 
things on trial to know anything with certainty. 

-* 

* * 

The best antidote to the worship of the Virgin 
Mary is the motherhood of God; the best answer 
to atheistic speculations is the peace of freedom, 
and the joy of a living communion with the Eter¬ 
nal Spirit of Truth and Love. 

* 

* * 

The age that seriously questions everything is 
far more truly an age of faitli than that which takes 
everything without questioning. Credulity is as 
far removed from faith as skepticism. To believe 
everything is, on the whole, worse than to doubt 
everything; because doubt is a highway to knowl¬ 
edge, while credulity leads nowhere, but keeps 
always in hopeless ignorance. 

* 

* * 

The only skepticism to which the Christian 
Church makes objection — no; that is not exactly 
true; the only skepticism to which it has a right 
to make any objection is that which asks questions 
and waits for no answer; which is perpetually 


172 


NEW STREAMS 


seeming to investigate yet never finding anything 
out; which doubts for the sake of doubting, and 
after it all is content to leave life’s problems all 
unsolved. 

* 

I stood once, many years ago, by the shores of a 
lake in Maine. As the .sun rose over the hills it 
touched with its rays of light a great bed of green 
water-lilies that lay in a little cove; and, little by 
little, lily after lily instantly, as the sun touched it, 
opened its petals, and in five minutes the field of 
green was turned to a field of glorious golden yel¬ 
low. Were not these flowers, and had they not 
bloomed because they knew the sun the moment 
it kissed them? Or shall a golden daisy say, I am 
not a flower, I have not bloomed, because I cannot 
tell when I opened or how ? A flower is a flower 
if it is in bloom; and a man is a man if he is in 
bloom; and whether he is opened instantly, or 
whether he is opened so gradually that neither he 
nor any one else can tell how he took the sunlight 
in, what matters it? The one conversion is no 
better, no worse than the other. 

* 

* * 

Christ comes to transform character; and changes 
in character are always and necessarily slow. The 
new-created world does not spring up full-formed 
at God’s command. Birth is gradual. The soul 
opens like a flower; first the bud, then the bios- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


173 


som. Christ broods the earth patiently, and waits 
for life to come, and, coming, to grow to its mature 
development. We grow into Christ by gradual 
processes; by processes that include self-sacrifice, 
sword-piercings, humiliations, disappointments, fall¬ 
ings, and risings again. After the wicket gate, there 
is the Hill Difficulty, and the lions, and Vanity Fair, 
and Doubting Castle. There is no express train 
from the City of Destruction to the Holy City. 
The gourd that grows in a night withers in a day. 

* 

* * 

So long as a man only concludes that there is 
a God because God is the best explanation of all 
phenomena around him, he is resting on no sure 
foundation, and he who will bring him a better 
explanation will take his God away from him. 

* 

* * 

We are not merely flung into a great maelstrom, 
struggling there. Life is not a series of accidents 
and mischances. This is a supervised judgment 
day; and when you are brought into trial it is by 
Divine Providence. He puts us there not that he 
may find out what is in us, but that he may disclose 
to ourselves what is in us. 

* 

* * 

You wanted that God should save you from 
trouble, and he has done a great deal better. He 
has let you go into trouble, and been with you in 


174 


NEW STREAMS 


it. It is no great calamity to be in trouble with 
God ; and it is the most awful calamity that can 
befall a human soul to be in prosperity without God. 

* 

* * 

Have you ever been in one of the great weaving 
factories, and seen the curious fingers pick up the 
threads one after the other as they are wanted — 
all machinery?— and you see iron and steel work¬ 
ing mechanically only, yet working out the plan 
which wisdom and skill devised for them before¬ 
hand. So life is a great factory, and the forces 
that we call forces of nature and life are these busy 
fingers; but they are doing the work that wisdom 
and love ordained beforehand they should do, and 
are working out a pattern that by and by will be 
completed in the eternal world. 

* 

* * 

The world is a kindergarten of little children, 
very little children, and the great God is trying to 
give them his great love and his great life. 

* 

# # 

One stands at the entrance door of a great hos¬ 
pital, and he sees the decrepit and the wounded 
and the suffering entering in, and his heart is riven 
with sorrow; then he goes and stands at the exit 
door, and he sees those that had come in with the 
white cheek going forth with bloom on their cheek, 
and those that had come in wounded going forth upon 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


175 


their own limbs, sound and whole, and his heart is 
filled with good cheer. So we may look at life on 
one side or the other. We may look at it on the 
side of blinding tears and a cruel torment, or upon 
the side of everlasting deliverance and an eternal 
song. It is in this second view we get the ever¬ 
lasting or eternal consolation. 

* 

* * 

What is the world? A workshop. We must 
toil and drudge and drudge and toil our day of ten 
or twelve hours ; then night will soothe us with 
her sleep. What is the world ? A schoolroom, in 
which the Heavenly Father is teaching all his chil¬ 
dren, through laughter and through tears, through 
toils and through holidays, through inspirations 
given by himself and inspirations that are got from 
a hundred helpful hands and hearts around about. 
And death is but the calling home, when school 
life is over, and real life begins. Why is it that to 
some of you life is only a summer’s holiday, and 
to others of you life is only an hour of drudgery 
and toil, and to others life is a magnificent march 
through God’s schoolroom to God’s eternal habita¬ 
tion ? Not that some are wiser than others, have 
studied life more thoroughly, are more rational, 
but that somehow in some there is a power of 
reverence, a power of conscience, a power of faith, 
a power of love and hope, that sees behind the 
Creator what the Creator hides from the others’ 


176 


NEW STREAMS 


eyes, and reads in the hieroglyphics of life what to 
others are meaningless symbols on a dead, dead 
stone. 

* 

* * 

In the varied discipline of life we owe, perhaps, 
more than we dream of to the very mistakes and 
errors of judgment which, at the time, are often so 
mortifying and troublesome. How much of our 
patience, our humility, our charity, our faith in 
God and his kind, loving providence — in a word, 
how much of what is best and sweetest in our char¬ 
acters — blossoms out of this bitter experience of 
our own weakness and short-sightedness. 

* 

* * 

Half the troubles in life come because men lack 
courage at the critical point; they believe thor¬ 
oughly in doing right, but when they come to a 
place where the moral aspect is not the only aspect of 
a question, and where very grave results may follow 
action, they lack the courage to trust themselves 
entirely to principle, and endeavor to find a course 
which experience and policy will justify. It is safe 
to say that whenever troubles come to a man who 
always does the right thing fearlessly at the right 
time, he is wholly spared those embarrassments and 
entanglements which beset the paths of those who 
try to follow principle with the aid of policy. 
Men have made footpaths through life in every di¬ 
rection, and he who attempts to follow them will 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


177 


find himself hourly and endlessly perplexed ; God 
has struck a solid highway, more lasting than the 
old Roman roads, along which every man may 
travel, not without clouds and storms, but free 
from the danger of losing his path, and sure to 
reach the end of his journey in safety. 

* 

* * 

God leads his people, and so long as God lives 
the humblest of his people and the lowliest may 
have courage for their work, and hope for their 
future, whatever becomes of the leaders around 
whom they have gathered and under whom they 
have marched and fought. 

* 

* * 

Combativeness and destructiveness are a part of 
the divine equipment. God made man a fighter; 
and God calls him to he a soldier. Some excellent 
men lack the capacity of anger; hut society would 
go to pieces if their fatal weakness was not supple¬ 
mented by the endowment of their stronger neigh¬ 
bors. Our boys should be taught to prefer peace 
to war; but they should be taught to prefer war 
to cowardice. 

* 

* * 

Some men have their virtues, as it were, in solu¬ 
tion. They do not lack courage; but they are 
never brave till they have time to gather up their 
bravery; they have always to send to the rear for 
their ammunition when attacked. They do not 


178 


NEW STREAMS 


lack conscience; but it is generally sleeping, and 
the time for decision and action is past while it is 
still yawning and rubbing its eyes. 

* 

Any man can pick up courage enougli to be 
heroic for an hour; to be patiently heroic daily 
is the test of character. 

* 

* * 

There is no courage higher than the courage 
which takes responsibilities when the providence 
of God puts them on us, and takes them with¬ 
out flinching, and without seeking to throw the 
burden of them off, in whole or in part, on some 
one else. 

* 

* * 

God helps us in ways numberless, but his help 
is always in response, not te our appeal from the 
lips, but to that cry of the heart which comes when 
one is making his own struggle and fighting his 
own battle as best he can. He sends his reinforce¬ 
ments not to the commander who, crying for aid, 
flees before the enemy, but to him who hotly con¬ 
tests every inch of the ground, and who has a right, 
therefore, to call for help. 

* 

* * 

Courage and recklessness are never akin. Cour¬ 
age is gold, recklessness is fool’s gold — the mere 
counterfeit of the genuine article, and a base, poor 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


179 


counterfeit at that. The reckless man is never a 
courageous man, and never can be. He sees no 
danger; takes no account of results; does not 
forecast: therefore does not measure the hazards 
and issues of his venture. He cannot be coura¬ 
geous ; for courage is going forth deliberately in 
the face of danger — a danger recognized and ap¬ 
preciated ; while the reckless man does not recog¬ 
nize or appreciate the danger, and rushes into it in 
ignorance of it. 

# 

# * 

Ho one has a right to leave unattempted a 
dangerous, delicate or difficult duty, and trust to 
prayer and God to make good the deficiency. Pray 
that you may be strong to do your whole duty, not 
that you may be excused from it. 

* 

* * 

Courage is the first condition of character for 
public station. The man who waits to see how 
the issue is going to turn, which party has the best 
chance to win, who does not declare himself until 
the public sentiment is indicated, is by nature a 
follower, and, whatever other qualifications he may 
possess, does not deserve to occupy the position of 
a leader. Such a man can never, in fact, lead. 

* 

# * 

Between the man who is always fighting and the 
man who never dares fight it is difficult to choose. 
The one is intolerable ; the other is contemptible. 


180 


NEW STREAMS 


In almost all life is some necessary campaigning; 
and no man is fit for life who has not something of 
the soldier in him. 

* 

* * 

To refuse battle because it is your deliberate 
judgment that battle will do more harm than good 
is both right and wise; to surrender a trust because 
you are too much of a coward to fight for it is both 
sin and folly. Avoid contest with your fellow- 
man as long as you can; when you can avoid it no 
longer, make it short, sharp, and decisive. Strike 
heavy blows or none at all. Never make war 
gently. 

* 

* * 

Cowardice is a crime, when courage is a duty. 

* 

* * 

Do not meddle with thistles if you can pass them 
by; grasp them with courageous vigor if you grasp 
them at all. See to it that love, not hate, nerves 
your arm; that you strike for a purpose; that your 
purpose is one which consecrates the blow; and 
when the purpose is accomplished, be quick to de¬ 
clare peace again. Never fire blank cartridges. 
Equip yourself for battle before the occasion for 
battle comes. 

* 

* * 

The man who is always quarreling never fights. 
The man who fights only for God and for humanity 
never quarrels. 


IN OLD CHANNELS . 


181 


Evolution is the development of an object toward 
the fulfillment of the end of its being. And it is 
that development by a force resident in the object 
itself. 

* 

* * 

There is certainly an evolution downward as 
well as upward. There is a progress of life and 
of death, of growth and of decay. The oak grows 
from the acorn ; that is one evolution. But dis¬ 
ease attacks it, rot enters it, it dies and crumbles to 
the earth, or remains only a leafless and unsightly 
skeleton ; that is another evolution. Growth is not 
the world’s Saviour. No motto is more false, and 
few more pernicious, than the common one, “Time 
cures all things.” Time cures nothing; it only 
gives an opportunity for other curative forces to 
do their work. Eternal vigilance, it is said, is the 
price of liberty. Eternal vigilance is the price of 
every good thing. National truth, purity, honor, 
can be maintained, and national progress promoted, 
only by eternal vigilance. There is always an 
enemy ready to sow tares if the good man is 
sleeping. 

* 

* * 

Science can tell us nothing respecting the essence 
of phenomena; it can only assert phenomena; put 
them, as it were, in their various pigeon-holes, 
show their relations one to another; it can only 
index the book of nature; it cannot explain what 
is written on a single page or seen on a single line. 


182 


NEW STREAMS 


Science looks at man from the outside; religion, 
from the inside. Science asks observation to tell 
what man is ; religion asks consciousness. Science 
asks the past and the present what is man; religion 
looks into the future and asks Avhat man shall be. 
Science takes him as. he is; religion takes him in 
his possibilities. 

* 

* * 

Science is not the mere putting of phenomena in 
pigeon-holes and setting labels upon them. Science 
perceives in nature a real thoughtfulness, and fol¬ 
lows along the path which pre-existing thought has 
marked out for it. Thus every scientist is thinking 
the thoughts of God after him. 

* 

* * 

Nature is not a machine which a mechanic has 
made, wound up, and set a-going, and with which 
he must from time to time interfere as a watch¬ 
maker interferes to regulate the somewhat imper¬ 
fect time-keeper. Nature is the expression of God’s 
thought — the poem which he has written, the pict¬ 
ure which he has painted, the outward utterance 
of himself. He is in it, and working through it. 

* 

* * 

Nature! AVhat is nature? What is nature but 
a word for God? What is nature but the minister 
and servant? What is nature but the elements 
that are dropping the great sheaves of wheat in 
our path, and we do not know that Boaz is hiding 


IN OLD CHANNELS . 


183 


behind the hedge smiling at our joy in our dis¬ 
covery. God conceals himself; he ministers through 
others, and takes as to himself the thanks we give 
to them. 

* 

* * 

The true artist is the best interpreter and the 
best introducer to nature. He is a seer. To him 
Nature reveals herself, and he in turn acts as a 
revelator to others who possess not his cultured 
observation. 

* 

* * 

God is in universal phenomena. The day that 
Moses climbed the mount, and it thundered and it 
lightened, God was there. In the day when the 
twelve disciples followed their Lord up that other 
grass-clad mountain, where only the birds were 
singing and the fleecy clouds were sailing over¬ 
head, God was also there. No less is he on every 
mountain crag and on every hillside. The blos¬ 
soming bush declares his presence as eloquently as 
the bush that burned but was not consumed. 

* 

* * 

There is no color that charms us on the painter’s 
canvas that was not before produced upon the 
flower or the cloud, with a sunbeam for a brush, 
There is no form of artistic beauty which does not 
mirror some superior beauty in life; no Madonna 
of Raphael which equals the living models from 
which he studied. All architectural forms have 


184 


NEW STREAMS 


their originals in nature; the Doric column in the 
noble columns of the forest, and the delicate trac¬ 
ery of the Gothic cathedrals in the more exquisite 
spires and buttresses of the mountain peaks. There 
is far less in the cathedral of Milan to indicate a 
beauty in design than in the Alps or Apennines; 
less in Church’s marvelous picture of Niagara than 
in the original which it faintly though beautifully 
indicates. 

* 

# * 

There are no atheists. He that says God is the 
Unknown, by his very sentence bears testimony 
that there is a God. Ilis subject is a confession 
of faith — God. His predicate is a confession of 
ignorance — unknown. 

* 

* * 

Truths are set in antithesis. Agnosticism is a 
protest against idolatry; and a true protest. It is 
to-day the protest of a reverential instinct to the 
theology which has made a phrenological chart of 
the Almighty and mapped out all his attributes. 
It was in Athens the protest of an intelligent but 
un spiritual philosophy against the theology which 
had mapped him out in stone. We make our idols 
with the pen; they made theirs with the chisel. 
Paul put himself with the agnostic: “ He that is 
Master of heaven and of earth dwells not in hand¬ 
made temples ; neither by human hands is served.” 
He is not bodied forth in hand-made books, neither 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


185 


by human words is he defined. I think if Paul 
were living to-day and had to meet the agnostism 
of the nineteenth century, he would do it by attack¬ 
ing the theological idolatries of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. “ I agree with you,” he would say. “ Can 
you by searching find out God? No. Can you 
find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Away, 
then, with your images of stone and your images 
on paper; away with your conceptions and ideas 
of God, which are but subtle idols; away with 
your notion that your service counts for aught; as 
though he needed anything. Away with your nar¬ 
row and narrowing thought ‘ that he dwells in hand¬ 
made temples,’ and that those only seek him who 
go to church and accept the preacher’s pictures as 
a photographic likeness.” Their images were not 
God; our imaginings are not God. God tran¬ 
scends knowledge. Though we know him he is 
yet the Unknown. 

* 

* * 

It requires an artist’s eye to see Nature as it is. 
It requires a musician’s ear to hear sound as it is. 
And it requires a spiritual nature to see Christ as 
he is. 

* 

* * 

In all higher realms life is the basis of knowledge. 
We believe because we are. Only the man with a 
soul of music perceives musical truth ; only a man 
with a soul of art perceives artistic truth; only a 


186 


NEW STREAMS 


man with a soul of goodness perceives truths of 
goodness ; and only a man with a spiritually de¬ 
veloped nature perceive spiritual truths. 

* 

* * 

All spiritual life must be developed from within. 
Spiritual fruit cannot be manufactured, it must 
grow. 

* 

* * 

Whatever truth or error there may be in the 
ecclesiastical doctrine of election, it is certain that 
God selects each man for his own work, and each 
man’s work for him. He looks in unexpected 
places and finds in strange quarters, where we 
should not think of looking, the instruments for 
the accomplishment of his purposes. lie finds in 
the prison house of Egypt the young man to be 
Prime Minister of Egypt, and redeemer both of the 
Egyptian and the Israelite. lie calls a shepherd 
from the wilderness to be the emancipator of Israel. 
He looks on the hills of Southern Judea, and finds 
there a red-haired, smooth-faced boy to organize 
Israel into a true nation. He chooses a Rabbi 
steeped in the scholastic lore of Pharisaism to 
preach the glad tidings of a spiritual redemption 
through Jesus Christ. He selects the poor singer- 
boy of Eisenach to be the emancipator of Europe 
from monastic and Romish despotism. He chooses 
a high-churchman to preach the least churchly ol 
all forms of theology in the Wesleyan Reforma- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


187 


tion. He picks uj) the President to guide the 
nation through its War of Emancipation from a 
Kentucky log hut. 

* 

* * 

God looks at the heart and not at the outward 
appearance; he selects, not as has been sometimes 
thought, inapt instruments, that he may show his 
own wisdom and power in accomplishing results so 
grand with means so poor, but instruments admir¬ 
ably adapted to his work, the adaptation of which 
no eye but his discerned. 

* 

* * 

God selects men for their work because of the 
possibilities which he sees in them, and which by 
his providence he develops in them. 

* 

* * 

The heavenly Jesusalem is a holy city let down 
to the earth. Heaven is at hand. If it has geo¬ 
graphical limits of any sort, earth is not beyond 
them. What powers of soul-flight to the other 
and far-off worlds the soul may possess, who can 
tell ? What explorations it may make into secrets 
of the universe into which telescope and spectro¬ 
scope pry in vain, who may guess? The stars may 
be other continents whither the emancipated wan¬ 
der, as here we travel through foreign countries 
carrying our bodies like heavy and cumbersome 
baggage. But whatever other lands may be opened 
to the winged spirits the earth is not closed to them. 


188 


NEW STREAMS 


Whatever other companionship may be theirs the 
companionship of earth is not denied them. They 
are all ministering spirits; we may live and walk 
in the midst of them. If our ears were adjusted to 
such delicate music we might hear their songs; if 
our eyes were not so gross and sensuous we might 
perceive their now invisible forms. 

* 

* * 

Any clear, definite and accurate conception of 
the spirit world is impossible; but the picture of a 
long rest, a soul living unclad or asleep, or waiting 
in some reception-room of heaven for its habili¬ 
ments, presents far more difficulties to the reverent 
student of Scripture than the view which holds 
that the Judgment Day has already dawned; that 
the dead are passing in a continuous procession 
from earth to God’s judgment bar; that death and 
the resurrection are simultaneous ; that the sepa¬ 
ration between earth and heaven is a narrow par¬ 
tition, and death is but the swinging of the door; 
and that the dead are living, more truly living than 
we, and living often close at hand ; so close that we 
are surrounded by them as by a cloud of witnesses ; 
so close that the evil spirits breathe into our souls 
pestiferous imaginations and blasphemous thoughts; 
so close that we have need to arm ourselves not 
merely against flesh and blood, but also against the 
prince of the power of the air, against wicked 
spirits in high places; so close, too, that mothers 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


189 


still keep watch and ward over their children, and 
the friend still serves by subtle influences as guide 
and inspiration of his friend. Oh! mother, layino* 
down at last your weary burden, and only too glad 
to lay it down but that you cannot bear to be sepa¬ 
rated from the children whose strength is so small 
and whose need is so great, who ever told you that 
you are to be separated from them ? They shall 
be separated from you; but you shall not be sepa¬ 
rated from them. 

* 

* * 

The kingdom of God is at our very hand. He 
who can present that kingdom before men’s con¬ 
sciences as a living and present reality is the one 
who will exercise the greatest influence in leading 
them to repent of those sins which shut them out 
from his kingdom. 

* 

* * 

It is the fate of the seer to be misrepresented by 
half the world and misunderstood by the other 
half. His friends never can comprehend him, his 
foes never try to. 

* 

* * 

Providence always has some great and masterful 
soul made and developed to meet and master every 
great emergency. As often as society prepares its 
molds, God fills them; pours himself into them in 
a divine fullness that brings to pass an epoch of 
history. 


190 


NEW STREAMS 


The great truths are never apprehended while 
the great teachers of those truths are living to ex¬ 
pound them. The death of a great teacher deepens 
and disseminates the knowledge of the truth. It 
was so with the death of Christ. It has been so 
with the death of evfcry great teacher since Christ 
died. For the truth is always greater than the indi¬ 
vidual expounder of it — deeper, higher, broader, 
larger. The death of the teacher deepens the 
knowledge of the truth. While he lives multi¬ 
tudes of men are attracted by his own personality, 
by the peculiar form in which he puts the truth, 
by the amplitude of illustration, by the vehemence 
of utterance and strength of conviction, by qualities 
that are in himself; and those qualities, while in 
one sense they interpret, in another sense they ob¬ 
scure, the truth. No man realizes this as the man 
who is trying to interpret a great truth to mankind. 
In him it dwells; in him it burns as a fire. He 
seeks to fling open the doors of his heart that men 
may look in and see, not him, but the truth that is 
the power within himself, and he is perplexed and 
humiliated and distraught and sorrow-stricken that 
men will not see the truth, but will only look at 
him, at his words, at his figures, at his illustrations, 
at his genius, at his gestures. But when he has 
gone, and these outward interpretations and sem¬ 
blances begin to fade from their memory, that 
which they really obscured, but which they seemed 
to interpret, or for the time did really though im- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


191 


perfectly and obscurely interpret—- that begins to 
dawn upon them. The truth grows larger, deeper, 
in their apprehension; they look back of the man 
to feel that the utterance was made eloquent by 
the truth within him; that the truth was the real 
inspiration. 

* 

* * 

No great truth can be fully made manifest in a 
single narrow life; and every individual life is nar¬ 
row. So long as the great leader lives the truth is 
caged; when the cage is destroyed has the bird 
liberty to fly out to carry its song everywhither. 

*** 

God is the great dramatist writing the story of 
life and giving it to us through different represen¬ 
tatives. The greatness is not in the man who wears 
for a single evening the dress and portrays for a 
single evening the part which God has written for 
him; the greatness is in the God who wrote it and 
gave it to him to do. 

* 

* * 

No prophet has the whole story to tell, any more 
than any artist or musician has the whole story to 
tell. Each man gives his message and goes his 
way; and it is true now, and through all the ages 
will be true. We prophesy in part, for we know 
in part. Augustine comes, and he has but one 
word to say — Law, but it is the law of God; Cal¬ 
vin but one word — Sovereignty, but it is the sover- 


192 


NEW STREAMS 


eignty of God; Luther but one word — Hope, but 
it is hope in God; Wesley but one word — Liberty, 
but it is liberty in God ; and Henry Ward Beecher 
has but one word — Love, but it is the love of God. 
And whether it be Moses or Elijah or David or 
Isaiah or Paul or Calvin or Augustine or Luther 
or Wesley or Henry Ward Beecher, it is God that 
gives the message. 

* 

* * 

The great prophet is one in whom God speaks, 
whether that prophet speaks in the Hebrew tongue 
or the English tongue, in the first century or the 
nineteenth century. If he be a prophet, he is a 
prophet of God, and God is speaking in him and 
through him. I do not mean that every teacher 
that lives is what we call a religious teacher, but I 
do mean that when we say “ the divine Dante ” or 
“the divine Shakspere,” we express a truth deeper 
than we are wont to think. The voice of Dante 
and the voice of Shakspere are in very truth the 
divine voice speaking through human life. What 
is Wordsworth’s message ? God. God in the long 
panorama of nature, where men did not see God; 
God in the common doing. What is Browning’s 
message? Browning, who lives in the Old World, 
in ancient culture, who hardly dwells in the nine¬ 
teenth century at all, who lives not in the fields, 
nor by the brooks, but in the haunts of men and in 
the hearts of men — what is his message? It is 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


193 


still the same message — God. God in Andrea 
del Sarto, the artist; God in Abt Vogler, the old 
organist; God in the St. John dying in the desert; 
God in Christmas epiphanies, whether in the crudi-« 
ties of the conventicle or in the superstitions of St. 
Peter’s ; God in human hearts. 

* 

* * 

We give and receive direct soul impressions. 
Every one of us leaves an impress on every one 
he touches; every one of us receives an impress 
from every one who touches him. 

* 

# * 

Soul teaches soul, character influences character, 
by direct radiation. Personality is more than either 
authority or wisdom. We are transformed, not by 
laws enforced by penalty, nor by philosophy ex¬ 
pounded by eloquence, but by the power of a more 
potent personality molding us to its own pattern. 

* 

* # 

Personality is the battery ; speech, literature, mu¬ 
sic, art, are only the wires that carry the current; 
of no use unless there is a current to be carried. 
The true musician, whether his instrument is a 
single violin or a great orchestra, is one whose soul 
is surcharged with a life which words cannot utter; 
and his bow or his baton becomes utterer for him. 
No skillful technique can take the place of soul; 
and no lack of it can quite destroy the power of 


194 


NEW STREAMS 


soul. A hearer once complimented Ole Bull on 
the wonderful effects which he had produced on 
his audience by his violin. The indignant musician 
rejected the blundering compliment. “ It was not 
my violin,” said he, “ it was I, myself, that did it.” 

* 

# * 

To every life there are these three currents: the 
undercurrent of works done; the inner current of 
life lived; the innermost current of thought and 
feeling the source and spring of all the rest. The 
first we enter through a study of the man’s pro¬ 
ducts, the second through a study of his life, the 
third only by personal contact. 

* 

* * 

We do not sufficiently recognize the value of 
conversation as a medium of life giving. The two 
greatest teachers the world has ever seen gave 
most of their instruction in conversations — Christ 
and Socrates. The art of conversation needs to 
be cultivated as truly as the art of oratory; and 
the woman of Christian character to study how 
to lead conversation into serious — not solemn — 
themes, and to discourage chatter and to rebuke 
scandal by her silence, if not by her words. 

* 

* * 

To be a skilled conversationist one must have 
knowledge, or at least well-formed and reasonably 
sustained opinions, or interesting information, on 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


195 


many themes. lie cannot control the currents of 
conversation ; if he does, it ceases to be conversa¬ 
tion and becomes a mere monologue and lie a 
preacher. A wide range, a quick sympathy, tact 
■— namely, touch with human souls — skill to draw 
others out in frank expression of their best thoughts 
and feelings —- these are the qualities of a good con¬ 
versationist, and can be cultivated as can the 
qualities of pen that illuminate and of public speech 
that inspire. 

* 

* * 

Small talk is the smallest of all microscopic sub¬ 
jects— a Sahara of sand to a grain of gold. 


The art of conversation is at once easier and 
more difficult than the art of oratory. To write 
and read a discourse is easiest of all methods of 
communicating knowledge. The reader — he is 
^ ; not truly a speaker — devotes a morning or two to 

preparing his address; may put on paper all that 
he has learned and give to his auditory all that 
he knows. The extempore speaker must make a 
larger preparation. He must know much more 
than he communicates; he must know the country 
which lies beyond but coterminous to the theme of 
his discourse. 

* 

* * 

All language is an attempt to communicate spirit¬ 
ual impressions through unspiritual media. The 


196 


NEW STREAMS 


medium is inadequate, the expression is always 
partial and imperfect. But there is a direct and 
immediate communication of spiritual life, entirely 
without language. The electricity passes from the 
surcharged to the receptive soul without a spark. 
The soul has a sixth sense ; and this sixth sense 
takes immediate and direct cognizance of the in¬ 
visible and the eternal. 

* 

* * 

We are sorry for those who can see in conver¬ 
sation nothing more than a mere confused babble of 
voices. To us there is a real touch of spirit with 
spirit. The invisible looks out upon us through the 
eyes of a friend ; we see something else than the 
ingenious instrument of vision when love thus 
looks love into our eyes. The invisible touches our 
spirit in the pressure of a hand ; and love touches 
love in the thrill that stirs our inmost nature. 

* 

* * 

Conversation is the highest, best, and, alas ! least 
used method of instruction. The writer addresses 
the eye of thousands of readers, but comes in real 
contact with the souls of few. The speaker ad¬ 
dresses a smaller audience, but they look into each 
other’s souls, and there is a contact of heart and 
mind. But the conversationist does more; he in¬ 
terweaves his thought with Ins neighbor’s thought. 
Their souls interlock. They act and react on each 
other. In conversation is the supreme opportunity 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


197 


for sjfiritual enlightenment. How few of us know 
how, how few of us even ever endeavor, to take 
advantage of this opportunity. 

# * 

The secret of many a man’s vice will be found 
in the evil influence of some woman, and the secret 
of almost every great man’s greatness and good¬ 
ness will be found in the influence of some great 
and good woman —- a sister, a mother, or a wfife. 
It is sometimes one of the hardships of fame that 
he who possesses it is conscious that others give to 
him the credit for a talent, a genius, or a power 
that belongs to another, to whom, by the nature of 
the case, and still more by the desire and commands 
of the giver, he is forbidden to give the credit that 
is her due. 

* 

* * 

Christian teaching and Christian living always 
carry with them Christian influence, though not 
always influence realized at the hour. 

* 

*• * 

The moment a man begins to take care of his 
influence it deserts him; independence is the first 
condition of real influence. 

* 

*■ * 

No man has a right to make his inability a limi¬ 
tation on truth, or swear that something cannot be 
because he cannot see how it can be. In my lawn 


198 


NEW STREAMS 


there is a bed of roses; one variety has what is to 
most of us a disagreeable odor. The class of critics 
whom I describe seem to me like the man who 
should go searching and sniffing in that garden bed 
for the rose whose fragrance he did not like. Let 
us pick the sweet roses from this bed ; let us not 
attempt to compel other men to like roses whether 
the fragrance is agreeable or no; but let us not 
hunt for such exceptions, nor judge the bed by 
them when found, nor even be-quite sure that there 
may not be a value in them discoverable by and 
by. Potatoes were once thought poisonous, and 
tomatoes useless ornaments. 

* 

* * 

The best way to criticise a bad method is to put 
in operation a better method. 

* 

* * 

A torturing truth is better than a delicious lie. 
It is better to follow truth to the rack and the 
fagot, though the rack and the fagot were eternal, 
than to follow a lie into a king’s palace, though the 
palace were celestial. God will never condemn a 
man for disinterested belief; and he will never 
commend a man for a bribed and purchased one. 

* 

* * 

Do you know that truth is by all odds the kind¬ 
est as well as the wisest and only right thing you 
can say? “I would not hurt him, so I lied to 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


199 


him.” He feeds on your lie. At last he sees that 
it is a lie, and—bitter. Then he learns the truth 
through your falsehood which he might have 
learned through your love, and he calls you cruel 
as well as false. 

* 

* * 

The sternest truth is better than the most deli¬ 
cious falsehood. 

* 

Thrift and covetousness are children of the same 
mother, acquisitiveness; but they are as unlike as 
Jacob and Esau. Like the working bee and the 
wasp, they belong to the same family; but one is 
a gatherer of honey, and the other only stings. 
To covet is to desire to get from a neighbor what 
belongs to him without giving a just equivalent 
therefor. To desire your neighbor’s property is 
not covetousness, and it is not wrong. Without 
such desire there could be no trade, no commerce, 
no organized industry. We all desire something 
that we have not, and we labor to get it; and it is 
generally, in modern life, something that our neigh¬ 
bor possesses. We shop because we wish our 
neighbor’s goods; and our neighbor resorts to 
every expedient to stimulate this desire. He ad¬ 
vertises, eulogizes, displays, persuades. He spends 
large sums of money in endeavoring to make us 
want what he possesses. This desire to acquire 
and possess is the mainspring of all modern indus- 


200 


NEW STREAMS 


try. It drives all the clockwork. The world keeps 
time, the world’s hands make progress on the dial, 
because of it. 

* 

* * 

There are other and higher virtues than thrift, 
for which thrift must sometimes stand aside. 
There are other and grander successes than wealth, 
for which wealth must sometimes be sacrificed. 
But to acquire property is an honorable ambition, 
if honorably pursued; and the spirit of industry, 
economy, and carefulness — in a word, the spirit 
of thrift — is one that should be cultivated by 
pulpit and by parent. 

* 

* * 

Righteousness in God is not one kind of right¬ 
eousness, and righteousness in man another kind; 
love in God is not one kind of love and love in 
man another kind; purity in God is not one kind 
of purity and purity in man another kind. All 
divine attributes are reflected and repeated and 
represented in man. All that is pure and noble 
and true in man is the divine coming to its con¬ 
summation ; seeds that are just putting forth their 
germs, or buds not yet blossomed into flowers. 
This is the meaning of life; it is the divine in man 
coming to its consummation. 

* * 

The gate to righteousness is a straight gate; the 
way to righteousness is a narrow way; it is the 


IN OLD CHANNELS . 


201 


gate and way of obedience to the laws of God, for 
these are the laws of spiritual well-being. No man 
can violate the laws of health and preserve a strong 
constitution by morning and evening prayers; 
neither in body nor in soul. Actions speak louder 
than words. Life is the true prayer; our real de¬ 
sires are measured by what we ask and seek by 
life. One cannot knock six days in the week at 
the doors of cupidity and ambition and self-indul¬ 
gence, and then enter into the kingdom of God 
because he pays a priest or a minister to knock for 
him at the door of righteousness for an hour Sun¬ 
day morning. 

# * 

There are truths which are like songs of birds 
in the air; it is possible to hear but not possible to 
transcribe them. The Gospel is not a mere episode 
in the divine life, a kind of divine Ober-Ammergau 
play, enacted once in the world’s history for moral 
effect. It is the manifestation of God’s nature. 
It is the revelation of an atonement which suffering 
love perpetually makes. I am filled with awe when 
I think of the marvelous ] 30 wer of the Eternal One, 
which keeps in their places every constellation and 
in their orbits every planet in these myriad con¬ 
stellations, and which gives life to every seed and 
tiny blade of grass. I am filled with greater awe 
when I read the one hundred and thirty-ninth 
Psalm and dwell for a moment in imagination on 
the Mind that knows the past, the present and the 


202 


NEW STBEAMS 


future, on the Eye that sees what is, what has been 
and what is to be. “ Such knowledge is too won¬ 
derful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto it.” 
But I am most of all overwhelmed when I try to 
conceive the infinite sympathies of the Infinite 
Love; to think of the endless calls upon the divine 
emotions; to imagine a nature so august and 
boundless in its feelings that it can at the same 
moment rejoice with those that rejoice and weep 
with those that weep; bring wine of joy to the 
marriage in Cana of Galilee, and tears to the grave 
of Lazarus; bear in a Father’s heart the remorse 
of the whole family of mankind, and yet bid all 
that labor and are heavy laden find in that unper¬ 
turbed heart a refuge and a resting place. 

* 

* * 

What has the Gospel of Christ done for you? 
Has it not given you motives that are the purest in 
your heart ? Has it not wakened hopes that are 
the dearest which you cherish ? Has it not im¬ 
parted to you a comfort in sorrow that nothing 
else ever offered you ? Has it not helped you in 
your struggles with temptation as nothing else 
could do ? Has it not set before you an ideal of 
righteousness and peace which makes life’s one 
true goal ? Has it not lightened the gloom of earth 
with the glory of a heaven into which tears and 
pain and death have no entrance ? And in all this 
ministry of the Gospel to you has it not addressed 


m OLD CHANNELS. 


203 


your conscience so that you could not receive its 
ministry without becoming a better, holier man, a 
purer, more unselfish woman ? 

* 

* * 

The Gospel not only makes men better; in its 
last result it makes them the best. The supreme 
test o.f a faith is its fruit. .Judged by this test, the 
Gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

* 

* * 

The glorious truth of the Gospel is not the casket 
but the secret locked within, and love only holds 
the key. 

* 

* * 

All religion is summed up in these two words — 
law and gospel; and these two words in one word — 
love. For to love God and serve him, and to love 
your neighbor and try to do him good, and to be 
sorry that you have done wrong and to try to do 
better and be better, and to do all in hope and 
trust in God — that God who looks down upon you 
through the face of Christ — that is the whole of 
Christ’s religion — all of it, all of it. 

# 

* * 

Revelation is the unveiling in human conscious¬ 
ness of that which God wrote in the human soul 
when he made it. In the spring I go to my garden 
bed and write with my finger certain letters and 
sow the proper seeds and cover it all over, and 


204 


NEW STREAMS 


there is nothing but a bed of mold. In June these 
flowers will have sprung up and they will have 
spelled out the letters, and there they are before 
you — the letters of a name. The sun has revealed 
them. They were there, but the sun has made to 
appear that which but for the blessed shining of 
the sun would not have appeared. Now, in the 
heart of man God has written his message of the 
love of God, of his invisible law, of the glory of 
redemption, in the heart of man God has written 
this his truth, because in the heart of man God has 
sown the seeds of his life, and then when the sun¬ 
light of his love shines on the heart of man this 
life springs up, that which was written before 
comes up, that which was before then is revealed, 
unveiled, discovered, made clear and patent and 
apparent. 

* 

* * 

Consecration is one thing, sanctification is another; 
and yet, if there be a spirit of consecration, it will 
carry sanctification with it; and if there be a real 
sanctification, it will have its root and source in 
consecration. 

* 

* * 

No man can sell himself so entirely that the 
voice of his inner life will not sometimes pierce 
him to the heart and make all his pursuits and 
gains a mockery. No one can gather such treas¬ 
ures of pleasant things with which to shut out care 
and sorrow that a sudden blast of trouble may not 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


205 


scatter them to the winds. And there is no way- 
in which the Heavenly Father shows his love more 
tenderly than in these hard and bitter experiences. 
He will not suffer the son to become a servant to, 
any master without bringing to his memory his 
birthright of freedom, recollections of youthful as¬ 
pirations, old hopes and aims ; visions of a higher 
life mingle with and embitter the life that is mean 
or sordid or slothful. 

* 

* * 

The way to rub out a disastrous past is by faith 
and hope in God for the future, not to shake your 

head. * 

* * 

The burden of remorse is not the same as the 
burden of disappointed hopes, mildewed ambitions, 
dead affections. It is not the same as regret, how¬ 
ever poignant, for mistakes committed or failures 
suffered. It is the sense of wrong done. It is the 
suffering not of self-love, or approbativeness, or 
affection, but of conscience. 

* 

* * 

Error bravely held is far less dangerous than 
the cowardice of indifference. 

* 

* * 

Error is not sin. It is not a duty to believe cer¬ 
tain doctrines, nor a sin to disbelieve them. The 
disbelief may grow out of sin; the belief may 
grow out of virtue. 


206 


NEW STREAMS 


We do not know truth until we have seen error; 
we do not know liberty until we have seen the 
prison; we do not know righteousness until we 
have wrestled with temptation. The whole prog¬ 
ress of the human race has been just this: a 
progress up through temptation and wrestling into 
a higher life, into a larger life, into a virtue which 
is better than innocence, into strength that comes 
by temptation, that comes even by falling. 

* 

* * 

We make a great mistake in attempting to con¬ 
trovert error by direct assault. Falsehood is like 
an earthwork; the more shot are buried in it the 
stronger it becomes. Crime is always to be repre¬ 
hended ; error not. For under no crime is there 
virtue; but under every error there is a truth. 

* 

* * 

A truth seeker will find some truth in every 
error, as it is said that chemistry can find some 
gold in almost every soil. You cannot convince a 
combatant by conquering him. To denounce error- 
ists is to confirm them in their error; to acknowl¬ 
edge their honesty and earnestness of purpose is 
the first step toward convincing them. I may not 
believe that man descended from an arboreal an¬ 
cestor of hairy habit, and furnished with a tail; 
but if I am to discuss with an evolutionist I must 
find some truth in evolutionism. If I can find 
none, I am not the man to conduct the discussion. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


207 


When the rich young ruler came to Christ with 
the question, « What shall I do to inherit eternal 
life ? ” Christ did not pronounce a sermon against 
justification by works; he told him to keep the 
commandments, and left him to find out and con¬ 
fess for himself that he lacked something. 

* 

* * 

The world would die of commonplace if it were 
not for the poets; and the practical man would 
never lay one stone upon the other if the dreamers 
did not see in a vision the ideals which slowly and 
despite much obstacle have to be laid in solid stone 
and actual mortar. It is very rarely that Joseph 
the dreamer becomes Joseph the statesman; one 
man to conceive, another to execute, is the law of 
divine providence. 

# * 

A noble ideal is very necessary to a noble life; 
but a noble ideal is not a noble life. Nothing is 
more sad than to see a man with divine aims drop 
into a life of sensuous self-indulgence; he might 
have been an eagle and rested in an eyrie on the 
mountain-top; but he dwells in the sty among the 
swine. 

* 

* * 

Nothing is more destructive to character than 
that which lowers the standard of character, as 
nothing is more destructive to commercial honesty 
and prosperity than that which deteriorates the 


208 


NEW STREAMS 


standard of currency. It poisons the very life 
blood, and breaks out in a thousand forms of dis¬ 
ease, each one but a symptom of the death that is 
going on within. 

* 

Every child is a hand mirror; if you see some 
ugly features in your looking-glass correct your 
own face and figure. 

* 

# * 

Every mother may be a Madonna, and every 
child is a Holy Child, bringing new lessons and a 
new ministry of love to the mother who looks 
through the eyes that look up to her and sees the 
Infinite that is flashed down from the skies into 
her keeping. 

* 

* * 

The patience, and long-suffering, and sympathy, 
and tenderness of the mother are but echoes of 
God’s voice, shadows of God’s glory, sparks from 
the great Sun. 

* 

* * 

Do not worry about your children. Do not im¬ 
agine that child-nature is a manufacture, that the 
soul is a bit of repousse work and must be beaten 
into shape, or a casting to be run into a mold pre¬ 
pared beforehand for it. Child-nature is a growth. 
Give it a chance to grow. Give it food — that is, 
good books and good companions; exercise — that 
is, a healthful outlet to all its activities; rest — that 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


209 


is, a healthful letting alone, not perpetual criticism 
or perpetual counseling; and plenty of sunshine — 
that is, joyousness, merriment, a good time. Then 
trust something to nature — that is, to God. I 
am not advocating that happy-go-lucky method of 
parental no-discipline that leaves a child to grow 
up like a wild garden, uncultivated and uncared 
for. But often children are cultivated to death. 
The father takes no thought of his boy’s compan¬ 
ions, and is horrified to find that he has learned to 
swear; makes no vent for his native energies, and 
is surprised to find the steam threatening to burst 
the boiler; hectors his boy with such perpetual 
and irritating restraints and regulations and “don’t 
do this ” and “ do that,” that the boy has no quiet 
of mind in which to find himself and his bearings; 
provides no recreation for his boy; never thinks 
that sunniness is as essential to the soul as to the 
plant, and that all work and no play makes Jack 
not only a dull, but a stunted and misshapen boy. 
Give your boy the right conditions, and then follow 
Dr. Lyman Beecher’s counsel, and “let nater caper.” 

* 

* * 

If our children are not God’s children in their 
babyhood, if they go away for the first years of 
their life, and need to be set right when they come 
to their teens, the fault is our own ; it is not theirs 
nor God’s. If the vine has been allowed to trail 
on the earth and twine among the weeds and the 


210 


NEW STREAMS 


thistles for five years or fifteen, of course it must 
be disentangled from its low associations before it 
can be started to climb on the trellis toward the 
sun ; but this is the fault of the gardener, not of 
the vine. It is our business to train the vine 
heavenward from the moment the first shoot ap¬ 
pears above the ground. 

* 

Children not only can be, but ought to be, born 
Christians; that they should grow up in the kingdom 
without ever knowing how or when they got there ; 
that they should never be in the City of Destruc¬ 
tion, never know of the Slough of Despond, never 
enter the Wicket Gate, and never climb in some 
other way, but should be born on the road to 
heaven; that conversion should be, and eventually 
will be, not the usual and normal method of becom¬ 
ing Christian, but the exceptional method for the 
unfortunate few — this, I think, is rarely conceived, 
and still more rarely realized by Christian parents 
at the present day. But it is the Scripture teach¬ 
ing. To suppose that all God’s flowers must grow 
out in the wilderness till they are ready to blos¬ 
som, and then be transplanted into his gardens, is 
to cast contempt on his husbandry. 

* 

* * 

Children are born neither good nor evil, but 
with seeds and possibilities of both within them. 
Every child is a possible hero and a possible cow- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


211 


ard ; a possible martyr and a possible apostate; a 
possible robber and a possible philanthropist; a 
possible saint and a possible sinner. In him are 
the germs of good and evil, of flower and weed, of 
fruit and poison. And in his infantile life both 
possibilities show themselves, now in acts of bravery, 
now in acts of cowardice ; now in self-denials, now 
in meannesses and selfishnesses ; now in truth de¬ 
spite suffering, now in lies ; now in oppression, 
now generosity. The battle begins when life be¬ 
gins ; it does not end with the best of us till the 
grave closes the strife. 

* 

* * 

A home without children is a grove without 
song, a garden without flowers. 

* * 

He who recognizes in every child a gift from 
God will welcome it as a sacred trust. There is no 
priesthood so sacred as the mother’s priesthood; 
no ministry so sacred as the father’s ministry. The 
mother is priest and offers herself as a living and 
joyful sacrifice for the child’s life. The father is 
prophet, serving less joyfully because to him be¬ 
longs no such divine privilege of sacrifice as to her. 

* 

* * 

Our children are the prophets that render to us 
the true meaning of God’s love, and we enter into 
the very holy of holies of God’s heart through the 
doors they unconsciously open to us. But while 


212 


NEW STREAMS 


thus by what they call from us they are teaching 
us, also they are teaching us by the example which 
they set to us. The child is a pupil-teacher; the 
child, receiving what good offices we can render, 
teaches us how we also may and should receive 
the good offices our God would render us. 

* 

* * 

Marriage is an earthly and physical relation. 
Nothing suffices to destroy marriage except the one 
crime, which destroys that relation, which disrupts 
the family, which leaves uncertain the true pater¬ 
nity of the children of the marriage, which thus 
converts the marriage, on the one side or both, into 
a state of concubinage. When this crime is com¬ 
mitted the earthly and physical relation is ipso 
facto destroyed. The wife of an adulterer is no 
longer his wife. By his crime he degrades her 
from her position of wifehood into one which no 
woman ought willingly to occupy. Divorce in 
such a case is the official determination of a fact. 
It does not create a separation ; it simply judicially 
determines that it has already taken place and 
affords legal recognition of it. 

* 

* * 

The basis of marriage is not a contract; though 
without a contract there can be no marriage. The 
basis of marriage is the ordinance of God. Not 
written in a book, though the Book interprets it; 
not authoritatively declared by Jesus Christ, though 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


213 


Jesus Christ did recognize and declare it; but writ¬ 
ten in the constitution of things; in the nature of 
man and woman ; in the fact that God created 
them male and female; created them to marry, 
and set them in families, and gave them the sacred 
trust of children, and made the Church, the State, 
industry, life, all welfare, depend on their fidelity 
to one another, for richer and for poorer, for better 
and for worse ; till death do them part. Whoever 
endeavors to weaken this bond of loyal fidelity, by 
word or example, sets himself not merely against 
the authority of Jesus Christ and of the Bible ; he 
sets himself against the highest moral and spiritual 
instincts of mankind, and does what little lies in 
his power—happily not much — to undermine the 
very foundations of society, to dissolve it into the 
anomaly of individualism ; to substitute lust for 
love, and self-indulgence for patient fidelity, and to 
degrade humanity to the plane of the brute creation. 
* 

* * 

Only love makes servitude tolerable. Of all 
servitudes that of marriage is the most intolerable 
if it be loveless. 

* 

* * 

Marriage is not a unity of soul and spirit; it is 
not a joining of heart and affection. Soul and 
spirit may be joined and no marriage ; marriage 
there may be, and no joining of soul and spirit. 
Marriage is the mating of the two in one flesh. It 


214 


NEW STREAMS 


is a union of the two in their earthly relations and 
life. For the highest happiness, where the souls 
are one the life should be one ; where the life is 
one, the souls should be one. But the confluence 
of the earthly lives, not of the invisible spirits, is 
marriage. Hence marriage ceases at death, though 
spiritual union does not; hence marriage there may 
be where union of spirits there is not. Hence, too, 
marriage is not dissoluble because love is dead. 
The mere cessation of sympathy no more annuls 
marriage than it annuls any other family relation. 
It is very desirable that the son should reverence 
the father, and that the father should be able to sym¬ 
pathize with the son. But the son does not cease 
to be a son because the father is unworthy of rev¬ 
erence, nor does the father cease to be father be¬ 
cause he is unable to sympathize with his son. So 
it is of the utmost moment that husband and wife 
love and honor each other; but they do not cease 
to be husband and wife because they cannot love 
and honor. Love and honor make the result of 
the marriage blessed, but they do not constitute 
the relation. 

* * 

Women nowadays want to know whether they 
shall vow to obey their husbands. It makes a deal 
of difference what you mean by obey. If by that 
is meant that the wife is to be the serf and the 
husband is to rule over her — no, ten thousand 
times no! But if it means that in the great sweet, 


IN OLD CHANNELS . 


215 


royal realm of love the wife is to merge her will 
with her husband’s will, so that as life flows on, 
these two wills wdll become one will in the great 
loyalty and bondage of love, then ten thousand 
times ten thousand times yes. 

* 

* * 

No woman should ever accept as husband a man 
whom she cannot look up to as her head; and no 
man should ever ask a woman to be his wife unless 
he is willing to use his headship that he may serve 
by it not himself but her. 

* 

* * 

Shame on the notion that a wife is only a cipher 
to stand on the right side of her husband, so as to 
make a unit into ten. A dumb wife is a disgrace 
to her husband. An independent wife is his glory. 
If she never differs from you it is because she is a 
serf and you are a despot. 

* 

* * 

A woman’s intuition is often wiser than a man’s 
judgment. She sees ; he reasons. 

* 

* * 

The setting is made for the jewel, not the jewel 
for the setting; but the better the jewel the more 
worthy of a good setting. The body is the temple 
— the temple of an indwelling God. lie who real¬ 
izes this will count everything a blasphemy which 
corrupts, pollutes, or dishonors it. He will count 


216 


NEW STREAMS 


sickness a sin — his own or some one else’s; for 
sometimes the father eats sour grapes and the son’s 
teeth are set on edge. lie will count health a 
duty. To be well is the first duty of man. 

# * 

The body is the habitation of man. And we 
have a right to judge a man by his habitation. If 
the fences are drunken, the paths unkempt, the 
flower-beds fertile in weeds, the windows broken 
and repaired with old hats, the porch in decay, the 
doors pendent on broken hinges, the roof ragged, 
we are sure that the inhabitants are thriftless, shift¬ 
less, idle, vagabondish, perhaps intemperate. So 
we have a right to judge of the soul by the house 
in which it lives. A clear eye, a clean skin, a firm 
step, a sweet smile, a ringing laugh, a blushing 
cheek, all speak of a pure, good, true soul within. 
And equally significant are the bodily signs of a 
soul diseased. But the body is more than the 
habitation of man : it is his organ; the instrument 
by which he must do all his work in this life. A 
good soul is useless if it has not a good body to 
interpret it in word and action. Eloquent thoughts 
slumber like seeds in the ground if there is no 
tongue to utter them. Brave thoughts die like 
idle dreams if there is no strong body to enact 
them. A heroic soul wins no victories if it has 
not a heroic body to carry it to the battlefield. 
But the body is more than either a habitation and 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


217 


an instrument of man. It is the temple of God. 
It is his dwelling-place. He whom the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain dwells in his children. 
Shame on us if we invite him to a house which he 
has wonderfully equipped, but which our willful¬ 
ness, our ignorance, or our neglect has suffered to 
fall into decay. Into what poor, unkempt, uncared- 
for temples we sometimes invite him! 

* 

* * 

It is grit that gives leadership. Men are like 
the figure naught; put one or a dozen of them 
together, and they are still naught. The man of 
grit is a unit of value; put him at the head of the 
column, and the two naughts become a hundred, 
the five naughts a hundred thousands 
* 

* * 

Grit is a feminine virtue as well as a masculine 
one. A strong-minded woman is bad enough, but 
a weak-minded woman is worse. She who pos¬ 
sesses this virtue rules her children ; she who lacks 
it is their nursemaid, not their mother. Grit is 
translated into achievement by man, into endurance 
by woman. Her task is the harder of the two. 

* 

* * 

The easiest way to get any grace is to inherit it; 
but grit* like every other grace, can be cultivated. 
A robust frame is a great help to a robust nature; 
broad shoulders and a good digestion are means of 


218 


NEW E TEE AMS 


grace. ' But they are only means, they are not the 
grace itself. Athletism is not grit. Grit is spirit¬ 
ual, not physical, and the man of grit always “keeps 
his soul on top.” 

* 

* * 

To cultivate firmness, never enter on an under¬ 
taking until you have counted the cost. Fore¬ 
cast the difficulties and impediments in your way. 
When you have once entered on an undertaking, 
never abandon it because of difficulties and impedi¬ 
ments, unless your judgment definitely pronounces 
it impossible. Then abandon it absolutely and 
forever. Never leave one enterprise half-done be¬ 
cause another looks easier. All enterprises look 
easy before they are undertaken; all useful en¬ 
terprises are difficult when they are undertaken. 
After you have begun your work get all the coun¬ 
sel you can as to how it shall be accomplished; 
never listen to any advice as to whether it shall be 
accomplished. 

* 

* * 

Self-assertiveness may be a good quality for a 
military leader; but it is a very poor one for a 
leader in Christ’s church. The church of Christ 
cannot be ruled by martial law. The ruler must 
be a man of tact; and tact involves the power to 
yield; skill to submit. 

* 

* * 

Ihe man without self-respect and the man puffed 
up with self-conceit are in an almost equally bad 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


219 


way. Self-conceit closes the door on all counsel, 
all warning, all admonition. The man who is sat¬ 
isfied with himself will never make progress in his 
character; the man who is satisfied with his cir¬ 
cumstances will never make progress in his con¬ 
dition. “ Know thyself ” was an ancient Greek 
apothegm; hut self-knowledge is of all knowledge 
the most difficult. To see ourselves as others see 
us is of all seeing the rarest. The “blower” is 
never an achiever. Sometimes he gets himself 
taken for a day or a week by the unwary at his 
self-valuation; but life is an inexorable test, and 
the greater his opportunity the more irreparable 
his failure. 

* 

* * 

Self-esteem is a virtue, not a vice — if you do 
not have too much of it, and if it is stayed on God. 
For the highest type of self-esteem is that which 
esteems itself a son of God, and will not do aught 
to dishonor its parentage. Self-esteem is the secret 
of self-possession ; of what men call presence of 
mind. And no mind is worth much that is not 
present with all its faculties when the need comes 
for its action. 

* 

* * 

The worst possible symbol to put on your coat- 
of-arms is an interrogation mark. No man can 
develop a spirit of courageous firmness who lives 
in perpetual doubt about himself and his work. 
Believe in your work; believe in yourself. And 


220 


NEW STREAMS 


believe in both because you believe that God has 
given you your work to do. “Fear not; for I am 
with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God : ” 
this is the secret of the divinest firmness. He who 
possesses this secret of the Lord, who believes 
himself set in his place and given his work by 
God, has the means for preserving an unwearied 
patience, an unshaken persistence, an unfaltering 
steadfastness. 

* 

* * 

The best ally of a good cause is self-respect. 
The best cure for excessive love of applause is re¬ 
spect for one’s own good opinion of himself. No 
matter what wreck a man has made of himself, if 
he has saved self-respect there is enough left from 
the wreck to begin over again on. No matter what 
a fine exterior a man may have, if he has lost self- 
respect, and it cannot be awakened in him again, 
he is beyond hope of repair—he is a total wreck. 
Beware of doing any deed or harboring any thought 
which will impair your self-respect. No man can 
long be stronger before the consciences of others 
than he is before his own. No man is weak who 
can defy the world as Christ did when he chal¬ 
lenged : “ Which of you convinceth me of sin?” 

* 

* * 

Erase “cannot” from your dictionary. You 
never can tell what you can do till you have tried. 
Trial develops power as well as tests it. The idle 


m OLD CHANNELS. 


221 


mill-pond can do nothing for the mill; but when it 
gets into the mill-race it drives the great water¬ 
wheel without difficulty. Have faith in yourself 
because you have faith in God; take what work he 
gives you; believe that you can succeed; be willing 
to fail if he wills to give you the discipline of fail¬ 
ure. The balky horse is the most useless horse in 
the stable; a balky man is the most useless man in 
society. He gives up before he begins; because 
he has no faith in himself. Do not praise yourself; 
but do not belittle yourself. Just do the work that 
comes to your hand; and let others judge of its 
fruitfulness. Self-confidence and self-reliance are 
the two shoots which grow out of self-esteem. 
They are virtues not praised in pulpits; but they 
are valued in life; no man has force who lacks 
them. They are unpraised graces. 

* 

* * 

Hosts of men and women are made unhappy 
by a self-consciousness which intrudes upon their 
sacred hours of solitude fio less than their hours of 
social life, robbing the former of their inspiration 
and the latter of their pleasure. Self-consciousness 
is the bane of the highest workers; it makes the 
minister think of his figures of speech when he 
ought to be absorbed in his message, it allures the 
artist into mannerism when his art ought to be as 
transparent as the air through which the landscape 
reveals its most delicate shade and outline, it puts 


222 


NEW STREAMS 


between the writer and his vision of truth an audi¬ 
ence which wins him more and more to itself until 
his prophetic power is lost, and he becomes an 
empty rhetorician with a shallow trick of words. 

* 

* * 

The self-conscious and the self-contained are the 
only solitary ones; to carry an atmosphere of sym¬ 
pathy is to people the world with friends, to open 
all the avenues through which whatever of power 
and good is in us can pass into other lives, and so 
to follow One who came not to be ministered unto 
but to minister. 

* 

* * 

Poverty is not a blessing; neither is wealth a 
curse. He was a false cynic who said, The Lord 
shows his contempt for wealth by the people he 
gives it to. Wealth does not reward the highest 
virtues; but it is Nature’s, that is, God’s reward of 
the economic virtues. 

* 

* * 

Whatever you possess you possess as a trustee; 
you are to give account for your trust; and by and 
by, not to a church, not to a state, not to a democ¬ 
racy, not to a nation — to God ! to God ! What is 
the use of things except as they serve men and 
women ? What is the use of accumulation except 
to disburse ? What is the advantage of the snows 
on the mountain-top except as they feed the springs 
that make the rills and streams that enrich the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


223 


valleys? What the advantage of the sun that 
floods the earth with sunshine, save as the earth 
catching the sunshine flings it back in a thousand 
forms in fruits and flowers? We are trustees. 

* 

* * 

Great virtues we admire; great fortunes we 
covet. The world goes out to see John the Bap¬ 
tist clothed in camel’s hair and feeding on locusts 
and wild honey ; but it wants to be Dives, living 
delicately and clothed in soft raiment. 

* * 

Money earned is money valued. You recognize 
the worth of the dollar by what you have put into 
it; but a dollar unearned is a dollar unmeasured. 
We always underestimate the cost of work which 
is to be done in the future. I am almost inclined 
to favor the abolition of all laws for the collection 
of debts, except those involving liens, like mort¬ 
gages, or those founded on fraud and false pre¬ 
tense. It would break up the credit system and 
help to compel men to pay as they go. 

* 

* * 

There is only one legitimate way of making 
money — by honest industry. He who makes 
money by taking it out of his neighbor’s pocket, 
without giving his neighbor an equivalent, does 
not make money at all; he simply steals it. He 
may do this pocket-picking by reputable methods 


224 


NEW STREAMS 


or by methods that are disreputable; but pocket¬ 
picking, whatever the method, is always dishonest. 
Any transaction the object of which is to make A 
richer by making B poorer is in the nature of theft. 

* 

* * 

Spend less than you earn. If your earnings do 
not give you bread and butter, eat the bread and 
wait for the butter. If they do not give you car¬ 
pets, buy clean sand. Live within your income, 
remembering that he who lives beyond his income 
is living on his neighbor, and is either a beggar or 
a thief. 

* 

* * 

Chance does not earn money, whether the chance 
be by the throw of the dice or by the rise and fall 
of stocks. The loafer lives on other people’s 
money, and the gambler takes money out of other 
people’s pocket and puts nothing back in return. 

* 

* * 

Spend your money after you have earned it, not 
before. Buy with your wages in your pocket, not 
with the prospective wages which you expect to 
have in your pocket when Saturday night comes. 
So keep out of debt. 

* 

* * 

Grade your income to your expenses; that is, 
spend what you want and set yourself to earn the 
money, and you will always be pushed, harried, 
perplexed, worried, and will live on the edge of 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


225 


bankruptcy. Grade your expenses to your income ; 
that is, determine what you will spend, not by your 
wants, but by your possessions, and you will always 
be easy and comfortable with a quiet mind. 

* 

* * 

The ambition to have and to make money is an 
entirely legitimate ambition. It is illegitimate 
only when it overmasters the moral sense, and be¬ 
comes a resolute purpose to be rich at every cost. 
* 

* * 

A wise accumulation of money is as Christian an 
art as its wise expenditure, and precedes it. One 
must learn how to get before he has to give. 

* 

The truest shrewdness is straightforwardness. Tt 
is always a safer road to success than crooked and 
cunning methods ; and even wdien it fails it leaves 
time and energy un wasted for use in other direc¬ 
tions and in more hopeful undertakings. 

* 

* * 

Any honesty that is based on policy is a policy, 
not a true honesty; true honesty is based on the 
soul’s perception of its reality. 

* 

* * 

The secret of all care is a divided mind; the 
cure for all care is a mind w T holly consecrated to 
do God’s will and wholly desirous to have God’s 
will done. 


226 


NEW STREAMS 


The cure for care is often supposed to be a child¬ 
like trust in God, a confidence that he will give us 
what we want. This is a mistake ; he does not 
give us what we think we want. The true cure 
for care is a spirit of supreme allegiance to God; 
the spirit that has but one want, the want to do 
his will and accomplish his service. Consecration 
is Christ’s cure for care. 


# * 

The remedy for care is not primarily trust that 
God will fulfill your desires; it is different desires. 
It is a heart set on things more sacred than com¬ 
mercial success, or competence and comfort for 
your family, or even life for your child. It is sin¬ 
gleness of desire that, whatever it may cost you, 
God’s kingdom may come and his will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven. If the mother’s supreme 
desire is for the life of the child, it is impossible 
for her to keep a quiet mind, however self-control 
may keep her unquiet mind hid behind a mask of 
tranquillity. If she has a divided heart, if she is 
in a conflict between maternal instinct and the 
higher desire that God should decide for her and 
for her child, her soul will be a battle-ground 
between rest and restlessness, in which the instinct 
and the faith will alternately triumph. But if she 
desires supremely that God’s will should be done, 
if she would not decide the awful issue of life or 
death for her child if she could, if she is glad that 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


227 


Another has that responsibility and she would not 
share it with him, she will be free from care, and 
every faculty will be left unclouded and alert to 
do its best service to save the life which it is her 
business to save if she can. 

* 

* * 

All the deepest experiences are allied with soli¬ 
tariness. There is a beautiful significance in this, 
since it is only as we withdraw ourselves from men 
that we find ourselves face to face with God. He 
who does not find the Creator in the creation and 
the Father in the brother as he goes about the 
world from day to day will never find him in any 
desert places; but he who does thus find the divine 
in the human, and who renders his service to God 
in his helpfulness to men, finds no place so filled 
with a great companionship as those solitary places 
which men call deserts. To be alone by ourselves, 
if we are right with our fellows, is to be with God. 
* 

# * 

We are sometimes so busy discussing about God 
that we have no time to be silent and hear God 
himself speaking to us. What is the music of the 
wind ? I take my scientific instruments; they will 
measure its direction and its velocity; they will 
tell me about it. But still its music is an uninter¬ 
preted music. The iEolian harp stands in the 
window, and the wind breathes upon it, and it 
answers in strains now grave, now gay; every 


228 


NEW STREAMS 


movement of the wind brings its response from 
the meditative strings. “ Be still, and know that 
I am God.” When my mind is searching God 
he remains the Unknown. When my heart rests 
quietly and lets him breathe upon it, the respond¬ 
ing experience attests his presence and interprets 
his life. We all know this in the experience of 
friendship. That hour is most sacred in which 
love silently expresses itself, and we understand 
each other without need of intellectual interpreta¬ 
tion. So God reveals himself to the soul that 
waits and watches and is still. For he is not in 
the tempest, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, 
but in the still, small voice. 

* 

% # 

In the art of electrotyping, after the type has 
been put together, and the form is ready for the 
printer, it is fastened and left in the electric bath. 
It must not be disturbed. If it sets there quietly 
and undisturbed for twenty-four hours, all the 
particles of copper that are diffused throughout 
the bath will be drawn by an irresistible and unde- 
finable attraction and gather themselves upon the 
form of type that lies there; and at the end of 
twenty-four hours these scattered particles of cop¬ 
per have become a reproduction of the form of 
type and ready themselves to reproduce the printed 
pages. So God enters the soul of man, resting 
undisturbed, quiet, there. All the various elements 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


229 


of the devout soul gather around the God that is in 
him. And after a little period of repose wkh God, 
behold, the man himself has become a duplicate 
form of the God that dwelt in him, and is ready to 
be printed and scattered broadcast, impressing not 
himself, but the God that in the quiet rested in 
him, that he might become, first, godlike, and then 
a voice and an interpreter of God. 

* 

* * 

He who believes in God and serves him is never 
alone. It is only the atheist or the man of unfaith¬ 
ful life who is really solitary; that which seems to 
be a desert, and which may be a place of supreme 
trial, is also a place of angelic visitation and of 
divine consolation. 

* 

* * 

There is no peace for the seeker after pleasure 
so sweet as that which succeeds the bitterness of 
the moment when he discovers how frail and hollow 
all of his possessions are, and reaches out after 
higher things; no peace so deep as that of the sin¬ 
ful one whose sins have found him out and revealed 
at once their corruption and his degradation, and 
who, casting aside all thought of self, opens his 
soul to the touch of the Healer. 

* * 

Peace is power. The strong man is peaceful; 
because he knows his own strength. The efficient 
men are always busy, but never bustling. Your 


230 


NEW STREAMS 


nervous Jack-in-the-box, strung on wires, and al¬ 
ways in a state of tremulous anxiety and concern, 
is not the man who moves mountains or stills seas. 
The greatest men are never in a hurry; they never 
lose their equipoise. One secret of Joseph’s pro¬ 
motion was his calmness. When they came to this 
youth in prison, and told him that the king called 
for him, he took it very coolly; stopped, shaved 
himself, changed his apparel, and made himself 
presentable. If Moses had been flustered before 
Pharaoh, he would have lost his head for his pre¬ 
sumption. This power was the power of his repose. 
Luther’s coat of mail was his great inward peace. 
It is not the man who goes gyrating all over the 
platform, like a parched corn on a kitchen shovel, 
that controls audiences and wins their verdicts. 

* 

* * 

The men of greatest deeds are rarely voluble 
men ; the men of greatest thoughts as rarely so. 
The gift of silence is a gift of self-restraint; and 
only he knows how to use his tongue who also 
knows how to hold it. 

* 

* * 

The tongue is the great guide and director of 
men. It is the bit and the rudder of human life. 
It has changed the destiny of nations. Is the 
United States a Nation or only a congeries of 
States ? The American people do not know. 
They have reached the parting of the ways. One 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


231 


leads to anarchy and dissolution, but with seductive 
promises of liberty. The other leads to strength 
and life, but alarmists cry out Despotism ! Then 
a Daniel Webster stands in the Senate of the 
United States, and by the power of the tongue 
turns the course of the Nation toward unity and 
life. From the hour of that reply to Hayne — 
“words, mere words”—the current of thought, 
affection, loyalty, purpose, flow in an ever increas¬ 
ing current toward “ Liberty and Union, now and 
forever, one and inseparable.” The tongue has 
changed the destiny of innumerable immortal souls. 
The drunken bookbinder is staggering along the 
streets of Worcester, hopeless, homeless, on the 
very verge of self-destruction. A kind hand is 
laid on his shoulder, a kind voice calls him by 
name and asks, “ Why not sign the pledge, Mr. 
Gough ? ” “ Words, mere words; ” but they change 

the current of a life, and the drunken bookbinder 
becomes the apostle of temperance, and by his own 
“ words, mere words,” turns the current of the lives 
of innumerable thousands from death and destruc¬ 
tion to life, and hope, and peace, and God. The 
tongue has put courage into faltering hearts; has 
been a reinforcement to a timid army; has changed 
rout into victory. General Sheridan galloping 
down the Valley of the Shenandoah, and meeting 
his routed soldiers fleeing from the enemy, waves 
his sword in air and shouts, “ Go the other way, 
boys! go the other way! ” and they go the other 


232 


NEW STREAMS 


way, and the defeat is made a victory by the 
power of the tongue, with a hero using it and 
enforcing it by his own example. 

# 

* * 

Foolish speech is very common ; foolish silence 
is very rare. Many a man has bewailed the folly 
or the offense of his hasty speech; very rarely did 
ever man bewail the folly or the offense of his 
reticence. A man may be silent because he has 
nothing to say ; but even then this silence is inof¬ 
fensive, which cannot be said for his words. The 
man who has something to say, and still is able not 
to say it, is often more potent by his silence than 
he would be by his speech. 

* 

* * 

Society or solitude — which shall it be? Your 
question is wrong. It is not, either — or; but 
society and solitude. You should not divorce 
them. Society alone dissipates. Solitude nar¬ 
rows. Both must co-operate, as air and earth. 
Keep your roots deep in the dark soil, spread your 
branches wide in the open air. To eschew either 
is to live a half-life. If you fear either, something 
is wrong. 

* 

-* * 

Society is yours to enjoy; but Dr. Payson was 
wise in shutting himself out of society when he 
found it leading him away from his Bible, his 
prayer, and his God. Literature is yours ; but 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


233 


whether the novel is for you to read or to leave 
unread depends, first, upon your own needs, and, 
secondly, upon the influence of your example. 
There is no more harm in knocking small balls 
around on a green table than in knocking larger 
balls around on a green lawn ; but whether you 
shall play billiards or croquet, either or both, must 
depend upon the law of love. Croquet is so great 
a temptation to temper to some good Christian 
people that I know not how they can take a mal¬ 
let in their hand and pray, “Lead me not into 
temptation.” 

* 

* * 

Deeds die, but words are immortal. Jesus gath¬ 
ers a few peasants about him on one of the hills 
which overlook the Sea of Galilee, and speaks to 
them a few simple words of truth, and love, and 
beauty. The words tremble on the air, and seem 
to vanish in the uttering of them; but the cities on 
which that morning sun was shining have long 
since crumbled to the dust, the very site of the 
most notable one is unknown, while the words of 
the Sermon on the Mount are still echoing round 
the world. Deeds stop with the doing of them; 
words possess not only an immortal but a self-per¬ 
petuating power. The loaf of bread you have 
given the poor is eaten in an hour; the garment 
you have given to him is worn out in a year ; but 
the courage you have put into his heart he has put 
into a score of other hearts, and your words of 


234 


NEW STREAMS 


love and hope bear children and grandchildren, an 
unnumbered progeny. If you had a treasury of 
dollars, every one of which when given in love 
had power to reproduce itself for further gifts to 
others, you would not be better endowed for be¬ 
nevolence than you are with the tongue, with its 
self-perpetuating coin of words. 

* 

* # 

What is wrong cannot be made right by some 
good end which it is expected to accomplish. If 
dancing helps and promotes manhood by furnish¬ 
ing an innocent recreation, as for my part I think 
it sometimes does, then it is right to dance for 
social enjoyment; but if dancing does not, charity 
at the end of it will not help it. A ball is not one 
whit better because the income of the ball is paid 
over to charity. A theater is not one whit better 
because the curtaiu hangs in a Sunday-school room; 
and a lottery is worse that is consecrated to good 
than one that is given to the devil. You cannot 
recruit the devil into the Lord’s ranks. 

* 

* * 

Healthy powers are always to be trained, never 
prohibited. Nature makes no blunders; though 
we sometimes blunder in interpreting her. 

* 

* * 

So long as a man enjoys his work more than he 
enjoys his pleasure, his pleasure is comparatively 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


235 


safe. The great danger is from a mind given over 
to pleasure ; the great safeguard is a mind conse¬ 
crated to its work. If the mother enjoys the party 
more than her children, to her the party is danger¬ 
ous ; if the student enjoys cards more than books, 
to him the cards are dangerous; if the clerk enjoys 
the theater more than the counting-room, to him 
the theater is dangerous. 

* 

* * 

What is the harm of cards, of dancing, of bil¬ 
liards, of the theater? Bury that pernicious ques¬ 
tion. Never ask it again. Substitute another. 
What is the good ? Life is too short to waste any 
of it in things that are merely harmless. Devote 
it, the whole of it, every hour and minute of it, to 
what will do you or some one some good. What¬ 
ever bears no fruit, cut it down ; why cumbereth 
it your little ground? You have none to spare. 
Does the evening game of cards quicken your fac¬ 
ulties for the next day’s work ? Does the evening 
dance give you a better appetite for the next morn¬ 
ing’s breakfast ? Does the game of billiards send 
you back to your desk with new zest for your la¬ 
bors ? Does the theater purify your imagination, 
or broaden your sympathies, or quicken your sen¬ 
sibilities ? We are asking questions, not answer¬ 
ing them. That we leave for you to do. We 
can readily understand that there is no universal 
answer to them ; that different readers will give 


236 


NEW STREAMS 


different answers. Then let different readers have 
different practices. Why not ? Why should we 
all read the same books or play the same games, 
any more than we all eat the same food or perform 
the same duties ? 

* 

* * 

What is worldliness? It is not doing what the 
world does, but it is doing what the world does 
because the world does it. What is unworldliness? 
It is not abstaining from some things which the 
world does, but it is the carrying into life a differ¬ 
ent principle, a different impulse, a different purpose. 
It is recognizing first a different standard. It is, 
secondly, being actuated by a different motive. 
And it is, thirdly, living an essentially different 
life. 

* 

* * 

A man’s religion is good for nothing if he cannot 
take it with him into society, into business, into 
the court-room, into politics, making the light shine 
where now is darkness. 

* 

* * 

The evil of worldliness is always the same — a 
low, mean, ignoble ideal. It is not in luxury, it is 
not in wealth or self-indulgence ; it is in the despi¬ 
cable conception of life as a mere gratification of 
the animal nature, the despicable conception of 
glory as a mere external pomp and parade, the 
despicable conception of happiness as to be found 
in self-service. The remedy for it is always and 


/A r OLD CHANNELS. 


237 


everywhere the same: the expulsion of an old by 
a new affection ; the substitution of a true ideal of 
life as in the spirit, of glory as in character, of 
happiness as in self-sacrifice. 

* 

* * 

The standard for the Christian is the same 
throughout all the years and in all places, and no 
man is living a Christian life who does not put 
that life of Christ in one side of the scale and his 
own life in the other, and weigh his life by that 
one perpetual and eternal standard. 

* 

* * 

There is no greater heroism than that of the 
man or woman who enters life anew, determined 
to achieve a victory over himself and the world in 
spite of a life thus far wasted, and a manhood thus 
far weakened and impoverished. In such a cam¬ 
paign he is not alone; for God is with him. His 
purposes count with God for achievement; his 
faith is counted to him for righteousness. Society 
does not believe in him; friends do not believe in 
him; father does not believe in him; mother has 
lost hope for him; but even then, when father 
and mother forsake him, God takes him up. God 
pledges his sympathy and offers his help. 

* 

* * 

The religion of the Bible is emphatically a manly 
religion. Its saints are not effeminate ; they are 
heroes. Abraham leaving his native land to seek 


238 


NEW STREAMS 


an unknown God in an unknown land, Joseph 
enduring without complaint slavery and the dun¬ 
geon, Moses leading a continually grumbling people 
into the wilderness, David going forth to meet 
Goliath despite the sneers of his elder brother, 
armed only with a cool head, a courageous heart, 
and a shepherd’s sling; Daniel going unslfrinking 
into the lions’ den, Paul inspiring the whole ship’s 
crew with his own calm courage, and, above all, 
Christ going forth calmly to breast the storm of 
the Passion week unfaltering and undismayed, are 
all illustrations of the heroic aspect of a truly 
Christian character. 

# 

Our own best and noblest life, our own greatest 
heroism and patience of love, interpret to us God’s 
love — only in ourselves we see him always in a 
glass darkly. Our highest experiences are broken 
gleams of his life. 

* 

* * 

We are to use God’s gifts with prudence; not 
merely with selfish prudence, but with loving, ten¬ 
der prudence. And in an age and country such 
as ours, with the liquor traffic what it is, the drink¬ 
ing usages what they are and the awful flood of 
evils that flow from both, every Christian man 
must pause and ponder before, by any act of his, 
he contributes to strengthen those drinking cus¬ 
toms ; before, by any example of his, he leads near 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


239 


the edge of a great peril his weaker brother. On 
this ground, and on this alone, can the temperance 
reform be based. 

* # 

Policy is man’s thought about the wisest thing 
to do; principle is God’s thought about the best 
thing to do. 

* 

* * • 

Curiosity is a good reader; conscience is a better 
reader; but love is the best reader of all. And he 
who reads with neither love, conscience, nor curi¬ 
osity does not read at all. He only thinks he 
reads. 

* 

The most fruitful reading is that which seems to 
take the least out of the book, and which stimu¬ 
lates the most in the reader. He who can tell 
what he has read does very well; but he who can 
tell what he has thought does better. He who can 
give account of the author’s thought is a scholar; 
he who can give account of his own is a thinker. 

* 

* * 

The most fruitful reading is meditative reading. 
What a book will be to you, will depend upon 
what you are to the book ; that is upon your mood. 

* 

Some persons read a book as men ride across a 
country on a hunt; the only object is to get in at 
the death in the shortest possible time. 


240 


NEW STREAMS 


Every man ought to have time to take up a 
book in a receptive mood, and listen to its message. 
He ought to go sometimes to his books as he goes 
out in his yard in the morning to hear the birds 
sing; not as he goes to the newspaper to get the 
last news. 

* 

* * 

I hear novels *and the drama defended on the 
ground that they are instructive. So sometimes 
they are. But after all that is not the function 
of the novel and not the function of the drama. 
Their functions are to furnish healthful and inno¬ 
cent amusement; they do not always furnish it, 
but that is what they ought to do. They may 
teach or they may not; but we are not always to 
be teaching somebody, and we are not always to 
be taught by somebody; there are times when we 
need to go aside from the labor of life and simply 
get recreation — the relaxing of the long-bent bow 
that we may spring up again and be ready to enter 
with fresh vigor into life, just because we have 
had a good time. 

* 

* * 

We thank God for the flower, we do not thank 
him enough for the seed ; we thank him for the 
perfect fruit, we do not thank him enough for the 
long, slow process by which the fruit ripens; we 
thank him for the summer, with its soft air and its 
masses of fragrant color, we do not thank him for 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


241 


the winter with its blasts and its snows. And yet 
his goodness is as great in the cold as in the heat, 
in the storm as in the calm, in the cloud as in the 
sunshine. We are continually asking for courage 
and fortitude, but when the bard and perilous 
times come which mold our feebleness into strength 
and transform our timorousness into bravery, we 
do not see that our prayer is being answered; we 
send up daily petitions for patience, but when an¬ 
noyances and perplexities throw their meshes over 
us and train us into the very habit we ask for, we 
fail to read in them the reply of Divine Providence. 
Our heartfelt longing is for the development of the 
highest and noblest things that are in us, but our 
thanksgiving limits itself too often to the comforts 
and pleasures that satisfy our poorest cravings. 
We are thankful to be comfortable when we ought 
to rejoice that God will not suffer us to find com¬ 
fort in any but the highest things. 

* 

* * 

It was a hot August afternoon, and the clouds 
had long withheld their shadow and their rain, and 
a little flower lay dying. As it lay there looking 
piteously up into the heavens and longing for re¬ 
freshment a drop fell down and then another and 
another and another, all about it, and fed its roots, 
and the flower, refreshed and revived and brought 
back to life, lifted up its face and said, “ Drop, I 
thank you; you have saved my life.” And the 


242 


MEW STREAMS 


Drop said, “ Thank us not; the Clouds sent us.” 
And the Flower lifted up its face toward the 
heavens and said, “ O, Cloud, in thy summer 
glory, I thank thee; thou hast saved my life.” 
And the Cloud said, “ Thank not me; the Sun 
drew me from the ocean, and the Wind wafted me 
here ; thank Sun, thank Wind.” And the Flower 
]3erplexed and puzzled, turned its face hither and 
thither, saying to the Sun and to the Wind, “ O, 
Sun, I thank thee — thou hast brought this water 
from the far-off ocean; I thank thee, O, Wind, 
that on thy wings thou didst bear it here for 
my refreshment.” The Sun and the Wind said, 
“ Thank not us, thank God who gave the Ocean, 
and the Sun and the Wind, and caused the Drops 
to fall.” And then the Christianly instructed 
Flower lifted up its face and said, “ O God, I thank 
thee who didst make the Ocean, and didst give the 
Sun its power to draw the Cloud from the Ocean, 
and didst give the Winds their wings to bring 
the Clouds hither and didst drop Drops from the 
Clouds that brought me back my life. . . . 

So may we turn, in the alchemy of pity, all our 
joy to gratitude. 


Never was a busier man than Jesus of Nazareth. 
Never was more work compacted into three short 
years. He sometimes grew very tired. Only a 
thoroughly exhausted man could have slept on un- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


243 


disturbed in a little boat so beat upon by the waves 
as to be in danger of filling and foundering. But 
you look in vain in the Gospels for any indication of 
soul disgust, of ennui and misanthropy. Learn of 
me, he says; learn how to work as I did; calmly, 
quietly, always in equipoise, always undisturbed by 
those harassments which come from the lower mo¬ 
tives. I am meek. All the weariness that comes 
from grasping and greed, from their haste, their 
foolish expectancy, their bitter disappointment, I 
know nothing of. I am lowly in heart. All the 
weariness that comes from pride and ambition, and 
their spurring and lashing of the soul to tasks be¬ 
yond its natural strength, all race-course weariness, 
I am free from. How much, reader, of the sources 
of weariness would be stricken out of your life if 
all greed and all pride were stricken out of your 
endeavor ? 

* 

* * 

The secret of happiness is, and always must be, 
not something apart from the soul, but something 
within it — a true spontaneous springing up within; 
conferred it is true, but conferred in, not on, him 
who receives it. 

* 

* * 

Happiness is not to be found by getting what we 
want; happiness is not to be found by tearing from 
the soul the Mother of Desire, and ceasing to have 
wants. We are happy when we have resource 


244 


MEW STREAMS 


within ourselves; when in us there is a fountain 
of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, faith, 
meekness, self-control, springing up spontaneously 
into Eternal Life. 

* 

* # 

The secret of a Christian’s happy life is in him¬ 
self. It is not where we are, but what we are, 
that determines pleasure or pain. It is not what 
we possess, but what we have become. 

■3fc 

* * 

Education is a share in the world’s great treasure; 
it is admission to an inheritance in the world’s 
stored-up experiences. All other wealth is useless 
without this; and this is enough without any other 
wealth. To get this is to get the best that the 
world has to give; to bestow this upon one’s child 
is to bestow upon him the best which the father 
can bestow. All other wealth takes to itself wings 
and flies away; this wealth is wingless. 

* 

* * 

That education ends in death is a common notion ; 
but it is one without a word of warrant for it in 
Scripture. In the Father’s house are many man¬ 
sions ; all are not huddled into the same room; 
and in Paradise there may be, for aught we know, 
a lower form for the willing learner of the alphabet 
of righteousness as well as an upper form for the 
pupil who has learned in this life to spell words of 
one or two syllables. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


245 


Music is the language of Heaven. It is so because 
music is the language of the highest and the richest 
experiences. It utters what words cannot utter; 
interprets what speech cannot interpret. There is 
a human passion spoken by Wagner unspoken in 
any speech of Browning’s; a subtlety of intellect 
expressed by Schumann more refined and tenuous 
than any in Plato; a spirit of awe and reverence 
in Handel and in Bach not to be found in Milton 
and Dante; and a vision of the eternal world in 
Beethoven not revealed even in Frederick W. 
Faber. Music is the great interpreter of the un¬ 
utterable in human experience. When music and 
poetry are combined, then the highest experiences 
of the soul have their best interpretation. And 
music and poetry are the language of Heaven. 


“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is 
born for adversity.” The friend who, when I am 
in trouble, joins my enemies, or even my critics, or, 
when I am depressed, b}^ his coldness or his sharp¬ 
ness depresses me still further, or who, when I am 
in difficulty, leaves me to work my way out, and is 
only ready with his friendship when I have achieved 
my release; the friend even who ceases or cools in 
his friendship because of my failures or my faults, 
and who leaves me to get out of the difficulty into 
which, by my own blunders, or even by my own 
sins, I have plunged myself — is no friend at all. 


246 


NEW STREAMS 


He only knows the meaning of friendship who 
loveth at all times, and who is nearest and best in 
the time of direst need. Such friends there are, 
but they are few. When the prodigal is wasting 
his substance in riotous living, he always has plenty 
of companions to help him to do it; when he 
begins to be in want, he is left alone. 

* 

* * 

It is not without significance that the two. great 
friendships of Scripture are one of them between 
men, the other between women. In the kingdom 
of love, as in the kingdom of Christ, there is neither 
male nor female; fidelity of friendship belongs to 
both sexes alike. There is this in common also 
between these two instances, that in both there was 
nothing to bind the two friends together except 
spiritual affinity. All the self-interest, all the court 
influences, and all the natural impulses of rivalry 
and jealousy combined to keep Jonathan separated 
from David; but all were as nothing compared 
with the strong affinity between these noble natures 
which drew them irresistibly together. We know 
less of the story of Ruth and Naomi; but we cannot 
be mistaken in thinking that natural race preju¬ 
dice, early religious education, affection for kins¬ 
folk, and local attachment — strong in almost all 
women, and especially strong in the heart of a 
widow for the land where her husband lay buried 
— must have combined to make it hard for Ruth 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


247 


to turn her back upon the country of her nativity, 
her kinsmen, and her so brief wedded life. But 
these ties were all as nothing compared with the 
ties which bound Ruth to her mother-in-law. Mate¬ 
rial philosophy can afford no explanation of this 
strange bond of union which unites souls often 
contrary in their qualities to one another. Meta¬ 
physics is almost equally at fault, but metaphysics 
at least recognizes the possibility of that which to 
the materialist must always seem unreal. For the 
immateriality of the soul, for its measurable inde¬ 
pendence of physical conditions, for its power to 
rise above all considerations of self-interest, whether 
of gratitude for favors past or of anticipation of 
favors to come, I would ask no better demonstration 
than that which is afforded by genuine friendship. 
* 

* * 

We never know for what God is preparing us in 
his schools; for what work on earth, for what work 
in the hereafter. Our business is to do our work 
well in the present place, whatever that may be. 

* 

* * 

The whole wisdom of life lies simply in doing 
the thing which is right, and letting God look after 
the consequences. The wisest man sees but a little 
distance, and sees that distance very imperfectly; 
God sees the end from the beginning. The wisest 
man goes astray, with Solomon and Bacon, and 
falls into abysses from which the man of far less 


248 


NEW STREAMS 


knowledge, but of simple rectitude, is preserved. 
In every perplexity, in every crisis, do the thing 
which is right, if you have to do it with your eyes 
blinded and with the consciousness that you are 
putting your whole fortune in the scale. You are 
not casting your destiny into a lottery, full of 
chance as the future may seem to be, but putting 
your fate into the hands which sustain the universe. 

* 

* * 

Every chance to serve is a call to service. The 
duty nearest to one’s hand is the first duty to be 
taken up. 

* * 

Duties are not a subject for exchange or specula¬ 
tion. In giving others work don’t give them your 
work to do. Nobody can buy exemption from the 
Ten Commandments, or furnish a substitute to 
keep them. 

* 

* * 

If you don’t do your duty, it won’t be done. 
Everybody has a week and a Sabbath to keep for 
himself, and one cannot take in commandment¬ 
keeping as he can washing. 

* 

* * 

Right doing and right being are the highway to 
right thinking. 

* 

* # 

Never take responsibilities which do not belong 
to you ; but never dodge those that do. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


249 


All successful business men are men who dare to 
take their own responsibilities. All great teachers 
have the same quality, whatever their school; 
whether it be Knox or Carlyle, whether it be Spur¬ 
geon or Maurice, whether it be Lyman Beecher 
or Ralph Waldo Emerson, whether it be Horace 
Greeley or William C. Bryant. They are men of 
earnest convictions, who dare take the responsibility 
of uttering them, whatever others may think, and 
however others may take them. 

* 

* * 

If you could imagine the letters of the alphabet 
endowed with free will, and then imagine an author 
trying to express himself therewith, you might con¬ 
ceive one letter saying, I want to be on the title- 
page ; another, I want to be an ornamental letter 
at the beginning of the chapter; another, I would 
like to be in the preface. Each letter desires to se¬ 
lect its own place, and the poor author would have 
a hard time to express his thought with his self- 
willed alphabet. Some letters are more important 
than others. Some fill a more important place; 
but it is the function of each letter to be just where 
the author wishes it to be, for the function of the 
letter is not to express its own wit or wisdom, but 
that of the author, whose servant it is. In the 
book of life which God is writing, you are one let¬ 
ter. Go where he puts you, and so bear your part 
in the message of life which he is spelling out. 


250 


NEW STREAMS 


Greatness consists not in occupying a more promi¬ 
nent position than one’s neighbor; it consists in 
being just the letter God wants you to be, and just 
in the place God wants you to occupy, that you 
may bear just the part he intends in the whole 
revelation of truth and life. 

* 

* * 

God calls you by your conscience. God calls 
you by his Word. There is only one path to eter¬ 
nal life. It is the path of duty. There is only one 
key that unlocks that gate. It is the key of duty. 
Feeling will help, belief will help; but no man 
need wait for feeling or belief. 

* 

* * 

The only way you can say may is to sometimes 
say must. A great duty is sometimes the only 
door to a great privilege. 

* 

There are great divine laws of punishment; he 
is blind who does not see them. But retribution 
is not the only fact. There are also great laws of 
healing. Therapeutics is also a science — thera¬ 
peutics moral as well as physical, for the spirit as 
well as for the body. There is a law of sin and 
death; but there is a higher law of the spirit of 
life, which makes humanity free from the law of 
sin and death, plucks us out of it, redeems us 
from it. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


251 


When Christ says, Judge not, that ye be not 
judged, he means exactly what he says. There is 
but one Being in all the universe who is competent 
to sit in judgment on others. Can I stand in the 
Judge’s seat with the trembling criminal before me 
and determine what measure of punishment be¬ 
longs to him ? I must know who his father was, 
his grandfather, and his great-grandfather; I must 
know what are all the hereditary influences that 
have surrounded him; I must know the environ¬ 
ments under which he has been brought up; I 
must know the nature of his temptation, and what 
measure of weakness or strength there was in him, 
before I can decide — is he or am I the greater 
criminal? But I can decide this: to reclaim him. 
Penalty is needed to reclaim him, and to reclaim 
society from the sin that has broken out in him ; 
but penalty adjusted to reclamation, not to the 
demands of vindictive justice. 

* 

* # 

We may form our opinions of our fellow-men, 
and we must, if we would work with them or even 
render them efficient service ; but this is different 
from the spirit which arraigns for judgment, puts a 
neighbor at the prisoner’s bar, and sits in judgment 
on his character, and adjusts penalties to his of¬ 
fenses. This is to usurp the divine function. The 
evils of our system of jurisprudence, no less than 
of our social criticisms, grow out of the fact that 


252 


NEW STREAMS 


we attempt to exercise judgment when we should 
exercise mercy. Not until society recognizes this 
truth ; not until our penal institutions become re¬ 
formatories, our courts are organized to administer 
redemption, not justice, to cure men of their faults 
and restore them to society, not to punish them for 
their faults and satisfy vengeance, shall we have 
laid the axe to the root of the present evil tree 
whose fruit is the constant increase of crime and 
criminals. 

* 

* # 

There are four ways in which we may treat sin¬ 
ful men ; four ways in which men actually do treat 
sinful men : the way of the wolf, the way of the 
bison, the way of the bee, and the way of Christ. 
When a wolf in the pack falls, all the other wolves 
pounce on him and tear him to pieces. And that 
is the way some men treat a man when he has gone 
wrong. They pull him down, tear him from shoul¬ 
der to shoulder, rend him, roll his iniquity as a sweet 
morsel under their tongue, rejoice in his iniquity. 
And these are the very men who are afraid, for¬ 
sooth ! that forgiveness will tend to take away the 
sanctions of justice and let men free. When a 
bison falls in his track, the bisons do not turn upon 
him and rend him, they leave him alone and sweep 
on in their course. And that is the second way 
men treat a man gone wrong. Put him in jail, 
turn the key on him, bury him in oblivion, forget 
him, and the great tide of life sweeps on. It is the 


UN OLD CHANNELS. 


253 


indifference and unconcern of absolute selfishness. 
Then there is the way of the bee. When the drones 
get too numerous, and cannot be endured any 
longer, the bees turn upon them and sting them to 
death, and then shove them out of the hive. So 
long as sin is not very objectionable, very trouble¬ 
some, leave it alone; when it really takes such 
shape as to threaten our hive, we will get rid of it, 
and then we will go on making our honey. The 
way of the wolf, the way of the bison, the way of 
the bee— and the way of Christ. The sinful man 
is my brothei*. Sin has not broken the bonds of 
brotherhood. He needs me, and therefore I need 
him; he wants my help, and therefore I want to 
give him my help. 

* 

* * 

Love inflicts no punishment which does not help 
to purify and perfect. Punishment is itself the 
instrument and method of forgiveness. 


A gardener came to his garden one day and 
plucked out from it the century plant and carried 
it away, and all the flowers began to wail and say, 
“ Alas ! alas! men will come here no more, or, if 
they do, they will think that spring is gone.” And 
the gardener said, “My children, you are mistaken; 
when the century plant was here, men came and 
looked, not at the sunlight, not at what it was do¬ 
ing, not at all to the humble growths it was bring- 


254 


NEW STREAMS 


ing forth from the cold soil; they only looked at 
the century plant. Now it has gone, and men will 
come here to admire it no more, but they will see 
in the violet and in the rose and in the pansy and 
in the lady’s-delight and in the lily of the valley 
that God’s sunlight is too large to be drunk in by 
any one flower, and God’s law too great to be 
manifested even by a century plant.” 

* 

* * 

You cannot measure your work by its present 
fruitfulness or fruitlessness. You cannot measure 
God’s will by present obstacles. You cannot con¬ 
clude that you have chosen the wrong path because 
it is apparently hedged up before you. You can¬ 
not justly conclude that you are to stop because 
you cannot see how to go forward. 

* 

* * 

Socialism and Christianity start from the same 
starting-point and propose the same goal. They 
agree in declaring that the present social structure 
is radically wrong, and in proposing to give human¬ 
ity an ideal society. But their methods are differ¬ 
ent. Socialism leaves the individual alone. It 
makes no attempt to improve his character. It 
sets itself at work to improve the social organism. 
Give us, it says, just and equal laws, an honest dis¬ 
tribution of wealth, cleanly and healthy sanitary 
conditions — in a word, a good environment — and 
the individual will come out all right. For cir- 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


255 


cumstances make the man. Wliat he eats, and 
drinks, and breathes make his personality. Chris¬ 
tianity begins at the other end. It sets itself to 
work primarily to make the individual character 
right; to get selfishness, sensuality,ambition, wrath, 
pride, out of the human soul. Its motto is, “ Make 
the tree good and the fruit will be good.” Men 
make society. Rotten timber cannot make a sofind 
ship. The first work of reform is with the indi¬ 
vidual. Socialism wants to get the grog-shop out 
of the street; Christianity wants to get the appe¬ 
tite out of the man. Socialism aims to take the 
scepter away from the king; Christianity aims to 
take self-seeking ambition out of the political leader. 
* 

# * 

The man is innocent who does not know the 
law. The man is virtuous who knows the law 
and obeys it. . . . Virtue is victory, and there 

can be no victory without battle. 

* 

* * 

Innocence is not the end of life. It is the begin¬ 
ning. We are not put into life that we may be 
innocent or retain our innocence. We are put 
into life that we may be virtuous and retain our 
virtue. Innocence is ignorance of sin. Virtue is 
knowledge of sin and victory over it. 

* 

* * 

To give something for nothing is always a dan¬ 
gerous piece of business. Sometimes we must do 


256 


NEW STREAMS 


it, it is true, but it is not the ideal kind of benevo¬ 
lence. If you desire to do something for the poor 
that will endure let them do something to earn 
that which they receive from you. 

* 

* * 

It is better to be true and thorough than to be 
fast. 

* 

* * 

It is a mark of the divine working that it con¬ 
sumes time. There is no haste in Deity. God 
waits for consummation. With him a thousand 
years are as one day. There is the slow proces¬ 
sion of the geologic ages before the earth is. lit for 
man. There is the long want and woe and igno¬ 
rance before the fullness of the times strikes and 
Christ comes. Now, since Christ has suffered, 
eighteen hundred years and more have gone, and 
Christianity is still militant, not triumphant. 

* 

* * 

There is nothing more wonderful about the life 
of Christ than the sublime leisure of it. 

* 

* * 

Friendly counsel is one thing; debate is another 
and a very different thing. Men greatly mistake 
who confound them. The more husband and wife 
can counsel with one another, and the less they 
debate with one another, the better. The very 
mistakes in judgment which the wife makes about 
the husband’s business, and the husband makes 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


257 


about the wife’s household affairs, if the conference 
is friendly and not self-willed, will quicken the 
other’s judgment. The steel cannot cut the beef, 
but the knife shall cut the beef better after a 
friendly conference with the steel. Friendly coun¬ 
sel quickens the faculties as iron sharpens iron. 

* 

* * 

Count no work too small for your great abilities. 

* 

* * 

The way to prove yourself worthy of great work 
is by doing well work that is not great. Whatso¬ 
ever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might. 
Moses, the statesman, did not refuse to be a herds¬ 
man for forty years. Paul, the preacher, made 
tents, and made them so well that a very little 
work sufficed to give him a support and enable 
him to devote most of his time to preaching. 
Christ worked at a Carpenter’s bench till he was 
thirty years of age. 

* 

* * 

Count no work too great for your small abilities. 

* 

* * 

We meet men, and especially women, who could 
do much more and better for the world if they had 
more and better faith in themselves. The herds¬ 
man begged off when God called him to become 
the emancipator of his people; he was not eloquent; 
Aaron would do better. But God knew whom he 


258 


NEW STREAMS 


wanted for the work. Paul begged off when God 
called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. I 
can do better, said he, here in Jerusalem, among 
my own people, where I am known. But God 
drove him out of Jerusalem, and compelled him to 
take up the work which, once taken up, no earthly 
inducement, no difficulty or discouragement, could 
induce him to abandon. Even Christ was drawn 
by the Spirit into the wilderness to learn there 
his powers and receive there his preparation. 
Whatever door is opened before 3^011, God opens 
before you. Whatever work is offered you, God 
offers you. He knows. Try him. 

* 

# * 

There is no hardship in true work; it is as far 
removed from drudgery as is the free movement 
of clouds in the upper air from the cheap imita¬ 
tions of sky scenery on the stage of the theater. 
True work has something of play in it; it is the 
jo} r ous overflow of a full nature, the natural out¬ 
going of a heart that cannot contain its own life 
but must find speech for itself in manifold activi¬ 
ties. It is only when we drive ourselves after the 
natural impulse is spent, when we urge ourselves 
to the task after the joy of it is gone, that work 
becomes monotonous, and then wearisome, and 
finally dangerous. Working days are spent in 
dealing with human adaptions and means, and in 
perfecting human skills; vacation days ought to 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


259 


be spent in unbroken fellowship with the divine 
truth and beauty. They are the recurring Sab¬ 
baths which leave an open road heavenward through 
our years of toil. 

* 

* * 

Industry is the condition of having an income. 

* 

* * 

God no more hands the bread of life ready-made 
than he hands the material bread ready-made. 
You must knead your own dough, bake your own 
bread, make your own garments, contribute your 
own service, do your own share of work, if you 
would get the benefit of any of God’s good gifts. 

* 

# * 

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work” 
.—thy work, not another’s; what is fitted for you, 
and what you are fitted for, and not something out 
of your sphere or talents. Men in the wrong 
avocation are breaking this commandment by sub¬ 
stituting others’ business for theirs. Preachers who 
should be plowing are not doing their own work. 
This commandment thus interpreted includes the 
negro’s eleventh commandment, “Mind your own 
business.” If you do all your own work you will 
not have time to meddle in other people’s affairs. 
Intermeddling is the fruit of idleness in your own 
sphere. Doing your own work is the most compre¬ 
hensive preventive of wrong. You must usually neg¬ 
lect your own business to do an injury to another. 


260 


NEW STREAMS 


Receptivity is the first condition of wise, right 
living; it is also the first condition of wise, right 
teaching. A man must become as a little child if 
he desires to enter into, not merely the kingdom 
of Christ, but the kingdom of any knowledge. 
And he must remain as a little child if he desires 
to be a successful teacher in it. No man is fit to 
command who does not know how to obey. So 
no man is fit to teach who does not know how 
to learn. This simplicity of sjfirit, this studious 
spirit, is a condition of instructing others. The 
open ear must ever accompany the open mouth. 
The minister or teacher who has ceased to be on 
the alert for new truth, or new forms and applica¬ 
tions of old truth, has ceased to have the capacity 
to teach truth to others. 

* 

* * 

We are here, after all, as children are at school. 
Our work is incidental. As workmen we are at 
best but journeymen apprentices learning by out¬ 
work how to work, and the real work lies beyond 
the vail. Here we are being ourselves made, and 
all our activity is only instrumental to the making 
of a man, and of all the processes and influences 
that go to make true manhood there is nothing 
like this coming in direct personal contact with 
God himself; not talking to him, but listening for 
him. If you could imagine the clay on the potter’s 
wheel determining what it would be and what it 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


261 


would do; the potter resolving to make a statue, 
and the clay resolving to be made an urn, so that 
when the potter had formed an arm, suddenly 
while he was attending to some other part the arm 
should bend down and become a handle for a vase, 
and when the potter had begun the face, the face 
should suddenly change itself into the nose of a 
vase, I think we should have a little picture of the 
kind of work God has on hand when he is trying 
to make what he will out of us, we perpetually 
also trying to make something, and almost always 
something different. To know how to be even for 
an hour passive in God’s hands that you may at 
least learn from those subtle influences which are 
indescribable, undefinable, untranslatable, what God 
means for us, what he wants with us, what he would 
do with us, this is the supremest experience of the 
individual for the development of the religious and 
the divine character. I suspect that when Christ 
spent nights on the mountain top in prayer, he 
was not all the time talking to God. Much time 
was spent in listening to God. 

* 

* * 

Have you ever stood in a great valley, sur¬ 
rounded by mountain peaks, and heard the echoes 
as they were repeated from mountain to mountain 
— some loud, some indistinct, some distant, some 
close at hand ? The echoes die away. They were 
but echoes — echoes of the living voice. So God 


262 


NEW STREAMS 


Almighty speaks, and one peak after another catches 
the word and sounds it out; but all these voices, 
eloquent and stirring as they ma}^ be, are but the 
echoes of the voice of God. They die away, but 
the God that spoke lives on, and will speak to you 
if you will but hear him. 

* 

* * 

The church is full of Marthas who are busy and 
bustling about that they may serve their Lord; 
but is it full of Marys who like to sit quiet at his 
feet and listen to what he has to say to them ? 
And to find an appreciative listener who wants 
not to serve but to learn — this is a grand and rare 
discovery if one has something which he himself 
wishes to communicate. 

* 

* * 

If you are sitting with folded hands waiting for 
your opportunity, get up and make it. Luck is 
pluck ; it makes all the difference between success 
and failure, because it makes all the difference be¬ 
tween manliness and cowardice, whether you spell 
it with a p or without. The motto of every true 
man’s life is, Whatever thy hand finds to do, do it 
with thy might. 

* 

* * 

It is no great damage to any man to have his 
opportunities inferior to his abilities, but it is what 
most men most dread. The worst fate that can 
befall any man is to have an opportunity and a 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


263 


position greater than his abilities ; yet this is what 
many men covet. 

* * 

God is ready to fill with his own life and thought 
the largest molds we can prepare for him. 

* * 

God, who creates opportunities, is always able to 
provide assistants. If you take the work that lies 
next to you, and there are needs in it which you 
cannot supply, some one will be found when the 
time comes who can supply them. Muller, without 
a cent of money, undertakes to provide for orphan 
children, and the Lord sends the money. Moses, 
without eloquence, accepts his commission to arouse 
a nation of slaves to a life of liberty, and God sends 
a man of eloquence to plead with and for him. If 
the nation could have foreseen the Civil War it 
would hardly have selected Abraham Lincoln as 
its President; it would have chosen a soldier or an 
experienced statesman. But the Providence which 
called Lincoln to the Presidency called about him 
men to do what he could not do—Chase, to ad¬ 
minister the country’s finances ; Stanton, to admin¬ 
ister its war department. 

* 

* * 

Never refuse the duty that lies next to you be¬ 
cause you are not competent; never go searching 
for some other mission which you fancy would suit 
your peculiar genius better. You neither know 


264 


NEW STREAMS 


your genius, nor what this mission or that will re¬ 
quire, nor what powers actual life will confer upon 
you, nor what associates and partners in work the 
Providence of God and the progress of the work 
will raise up for you. 

* 

* * 

Your own soul is a growth, not a manufacture. 
Accept yourself, and do not' try to bfe some one 
else. Make the most out of yourself that you can ; 
but do not repine because you cannot make your¬ 
self into some one else. Variation is as marked a 
feature in the spiritual as in the natural realm. 
Cultivate the gift that is in thee. Run with pa¬ 
tience the race that is set before thee. We waste 
energies in trying to cultivate gifts we do not pos¬ 
sess, and in trying to run races set before other 
souls. 

* 

* * 

He whose energy is expended in getting a posi¬ 
tion has none left to expend in making himself 
worthy of it. 

* 

* * 

In every business God is a silent partner, and 
he cannot be defrauded. His supervision is omni¬ 
present and infallible; he notes and records every 
dishonest transaction, however disguised by the 
well-worn phrases of trade, every selfish abuse of 
a common opportunity, every departure from the 
highest standard of rectitude. The only really 
successful business man consults and follows the 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


265 


counsel of this unseen partner; and every venture 
made in opposition to his will, though it bring in a 
flood-tide of gold, somewhere, at some time, brings 
also disaster, sorrow, and the bitterness of failure. 
The lower class of Hindoo tradesmen keep little 
idols in their shops, and, when a customer approaches 
hastily, invoke these gods to help them impose on 
the buyer; the Christian merchant needs God in 
his counting-room to keep him from imposing on 
himself by taking the least gain secured by any 
dishonor. 

* 

* * 

Any business is legitimate which is scattering 
blessings through the community, and any business 
is illegitimate which is simply transferring money 
from one pocket to another pocket, and affording 
no good to anybody in the transfer. 

* * 

The business man lives by faith as truly as the 
most devout Christian ; his whole business is built 
on it. He trusts his employees, he trusts his part¬ 
ners, he trusts his bank, he trusts his customers; 
any and all these, by violating the confidence which 
he reposes in them, can seriously embarrass, often 
totally ruin him. Ilis business has its visible ma¬ 
chinery, its stock of merchandise, its organization 
for work, and its books of account; but the value 
of all these depends on the invisible good faith and 
honor of the community at large. No enterprise 


266 


NEW STREAMS 


stands alone; it stretches out hands in every direc¬ 
tion, and the greater it is, the greater its depend¬ 
ence. Let it have its foreign branches, and its 
credit will he sensitive to every rumor of war. 
Not less does the business man depend upon God; 
every business opens account with the invisible 
Master of human life and destiny. In that account 
are entered the debits for favoring winds and rains, 
for crops which bring prosperity, and for that honor 
born of Christian living which alone makes business 
possible. 

* * 

Of all fears, the fear of a victorious infidelity 
seems to me to be the most foolish. Some articles 
of your creed may go, and your creed be better 
for losing them; but the great fundamental facts 
attested by human experience and by the world’s 
history never go. They will last as long as human¬ 
ity itself lasts, because they have been thoroughly 
wrought into the nature and experience of man. 

* 

* * 

Infidelity has sometimes broken down obstacles; 
but it has pioneered no one ; it has led nowhere. 
The leaders in scientific progress have been the 
men who have taught that nature is the handiwork 
of God, and therefore to be studied as his book ; 
bestowed upon man, and therefore to be used as 
his inheritance. Copernicus and Galileo were both 
faithful children of the church. Liberty has been 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


267 


nurtured in her lap; religious liberty has preceded 
civil; belief in the equality of all men before God’s 
judgment throne has prepared the way for belief 
in the equality of all men before earthly courts 
and thrones. Alfred the Great was a great king 
because he was a true believer; he hewed out of 
the Bible the grand foundations of the British 
Constitution. The Franciscan friars were the edu¬ 
cators of that Simon de Montfort who was founder 
of the English Parliament. A Puritan conscience 
and a Puritan church won for England and for us 
the supremacy of government of the people, by 
the people, for the people. In all ages the church 
which has dreaded progress and resisted it has 
been a degenerate and apostate church; the church 
which has led the very vanguard of thought and 
life has been the church of the living God. To-day 
in America the true church is not the one which 
rests in cushioned pews, content with fields already 
occupied and victories already won, but that which 
is pressing forward to occupy new fields and con¬ 
quer in new battles. 

* 

* * 

The greatest enemy of the cross of Christ is not 
the open, blatant infidel who reviles it; nay, un¬ 
consciously he is helping on the cross of Christ; 
the real enemies of the cross of Christ, the real 
enemies of the spirit of self-sacrifice in God and in 
man, are the men who call themselves neutral; the 


268 


NEW STREAMS 


men who withstand love by the inertia of selfish 
indifference and unconcern. 

* 

* * 

Moral indifference is a harder crust to break 
through than intellectual disbelief. The skepti¬ 
cism which comes of willful choosing of wrong is 
far more difficult to meet than that which comes 
of mere intellectualism mated to a nature whose 
spiritual faculties have never been aroused. The 
man who will give a reason for the unfaith that 
is in him the teacher can do something to meet. 
The man who will give no reason, who treats the 
truth with a sneering or a silent contempt, is invul¬ 
nerable. This is the last stage of the mortal dis¬ 
ease whose end is eternal death. The soul has 
already lapsed into unconsciousness, from which 
ordinarily no voice of man, however earnest, can 
arouse it. 

* 

* * 

Skepticism is like the measles — very dangerous 
if it is driven in — comparatively harmless if it is 
encouraged to come out. 

* 

# * 

Promptness is one of the qualities which com¬ 
mand success. There are certain gentle attractive 
qualities which win it, but promptness makes no 
suit for prosperity, it commands it; as a general 
who skillfully masses his batteries on the enemy’s 
position has only to open fire, and the place is his. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


269 


Promptness is leadership; it does not follow like 
some of the other virtues; it leads the charge, and 
plants itself first on the obstacle in its path. This 
is a prompt universe or it would cease to he a 
universe, and go back into the chaos out of which 
the divine Builder reared it. Every world sweeps 
round its orbit without the delay of a second; 
every planet completes its august circuit through 
the heavens on the instant; suns rise and set cen¬ 
tury after century, and the sublime movement of 
the universe goes forward without the loss of a 
moment. 

The overhanging heavens are God’s time-keepers, 
by which earth sets its clocks and marks the 
little interval of its life. The heavens which de¬ 
clare the glory of God declare also his prompt¬ 
ness; the business of the universe is always done 
on time. The business of men’s lives can be 
well done in no other way. The man who delays 
and is late violates that order which is Heaven’s 
first law, and does what he can to turn the world 
back to original chaos. He destroys his own chance 
of success; he breaks up the carefully-laid plans 
of other men more faithful than he; he blocks the 
wheels of universal progress. Such a man is not 
only a failure, but a nuisance to the community in 
which he lives. If you want success, be prompt; 
fall in line with the stars, and do your work on the 
instant. God is prompt; you cannot afford to be 
otherwise. 


270 


NEW STREAMS 


It is often wise to wait and consider what shall 
be done; but it is also often wise to act promptly. 
There are times when no blunder is so great as 
delay; times when the worst of all action is inaction. 
* 

* * 

Philosophy is generally pessimistic; Christianity 
is always full of hope. Philosophy takes man as 
he is ; and in man as he is there is not much hope. 
Christianity gives to man One who is not man ; 
and in that One there is infinite hope. Philosophy 
can at best explain the phenomena of life; Christi¬ 
anity imparts new power to it. Life blossoms 
when God touches it, as the deseit plain when 
heaven’s waters descend upon it. Philosophy is 
an explanation ; Christianity is also a gift. 

* 

* * 

Acquaintance is a growth. Sometimes it brings 
strange surprises ; sometimes it deepens our rever¬ 
ence and strengthens our esteem, and sometimes it 
destroys them both. 

* 

* * 

Debt is dishonesty; it is self-indulgence; it is 
living on your neighbor; it is an unconscious 
confidence game. 

* 

* *• 

Debt is second cousin to dishonesty. When one 
incurs a debt without reasonable assurance of his 
ability to pay it, the relationship of the transaction 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


271 


to dishonesty is much closer. I would rather wear 
a threadbare overcoat which belongs to me than a 
new one which belongs to my tailor, and if I have 
not paid for my coat it belongs to my tailor. 

* 

* * 

Render your service to the world before jmu ask 
the world to cash your draft upon it. This also is 
not an easy rule to obey, but it is a simple one to 
understand; and he who has sufficient self-denial 
to obey it, whatever else he may suffer, will never 
suffer the burden of debt. 

* * 

There are men who are always carrying on a 
guerrilla warfare with their evil passions. If a 
man finds a foe to his spiritual well-being, he 
should exterminate it and have done with it. We 
keep in chronic warfare with our pride, our vanity, 
our appetites, because we are afraid of hurting our¬ 
selves. “Crucify” the old man is Paul’s manly 
advice. Do not parley with him; do not make 
war on him gently. Kill him ; torture him if need 
be; get him under six feet of sod; and so be at 
peace with yourself. 

* 

* * 

Temptation does not necessarily involve sin. 
And no one of you is sinful because you have 
to battle to maintain your conscience and your 
righteousness. 


272 


NEW STREAMS 


A man may quarantine himself against contagion 
from without, and a nation may quarantine itself 
against corruption from without; but neither man 
nor nation can quarantine itself against a disease 
which is within its own vitals. 

* 

* * 

A man might as well attempt to make a garden 
by digging out or cutting off all the weeds and 
planting no seeds as to attempt to make a good 
man or a good community by cutting off the out¬ 
crop of vices without inculcating the germinant 
seeds of virtue. 

% 

* * 

It is a part of our duty in society, and certainly of 
our right, to protect ourselves from wrong-doing. 
But self-protection is not the principal end and 
aim of social order. Selfishness is always blind. 
Love only is clear-eyed. Our duty is not simply 
self-protection, not chiefly self-protection ; still less 
is it simply the reformation of the individual of¬ 
fender. Our duty is not to protect ourselves from 
evil, but to overcome the evil; not merely to pro¬ 
tect society, but to redeem society; not merely to 
wall up this crime before four prison-walls, or send 
it to a Botany Bay, but to get rid of it, to sweep it 
out of existence, to transform it. 

*- 

* * 

Near my old home in the West there was for 
years and years what was known as the “ lost 


OLD CHANNELS. 


273 


creek.” This creek, coming down from the hills 
far away, buried itself in the prairie, turning it now 
into a noisome swamp, and now, in the rainy sea¬ 
son, into a beautiful but equally noisome lake. 
Men fled from it, or they lived near it and fought 
it with quinine, and grew sallow and palsied and 
weak. At last some clever engineer said, “ Why 
not drain it?” And they drained the lost creek, 
and carried it aw^ay into the waters of the Wabash 
River; and the yellow cheeks were yellow no 
longer, and the palsied limbs were palsied no 
longer, and life and health and strength came back 
when the miasmatic swamp was drained, and they 
had gotten rid of it. Now in our country, and in 
all countries, there is a great swamp sending out 
its evil influences, larger, broader, 1 think, than 
any of us imagine, corrupting our press, feeding on 
liquor shops, polluting all the sources of our life, 
drawing into itself those that stand just on the 
border line, multiplying crime and iniquity, dead¬ 
ening sensibility, dwarfing virtue. What are we to 
do with it ? Build a wall around it, and so try to 
protect ourselves Against it? No ! Drain it. Get 
rid of it. Redeem society from it. 

* 

* * 

Our business is to do right ourselves; not to 
compel our neighbors to do right, nor to condemn 
them for doing wrong. Are we, then, to form no 
opinions of our neighbors? Yes! just in so far as 


274 


NEW STREAMS 


that may be necessary to enable us to deal with 
them. But we are never to go up into God’s 
judgment throne, and in imagination summon up 
a supposed culprit before us, and decide on his 
guilt, and pronounce against him sentence. This 
is God’s work. He knows. He can save; he can 
condemn. We can do neither. Censoriousness is 
blasphemy. It is assuming God’s work; and when 
we assume to do God’s work we always do it ill. 

* 

* * 

The foundation of all hope for one’s self, or for 
one’s neighbor, of all reverence for God or useful¬ 
ness in life, is faith in the reality of righteousness. 

# * 

The cynic is a fool. He thinks he knows human 
nature; and he knows nothing about it. For 
knowledge of man comes through sympathy with 
men; and hope gives a better vision than cold 
observation. To know the mountain you must 
know the hidden gold in the mountain; to know 
the intervale you must know the possibilities both 
of corn and of witchgrass which it contains. The 
true wisdom is the wisdom of a tender, pitying, 
sympathetic, clear-eyed insight. 

* * 

* * 

To disbelieve in goodness is worse even than to 
disbelieve in God, for it carries disbelief in God 
with it. The spirit of hope in man and for man is 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


275 


the divine spirit; the spirit of unfaith in man is the 
evil spirit, and however it may veil itself in society, 
and however it may robe itself in literature, and 
whatever eclat it may claim for itself as knowledge 
of human nature, it is false — the spirit that comes 
from the Father of Lies. 

# 

* * 

Satan is a cynic; cynicism is Satanic. The spirit 
which disbelieves in man, in goodness, in virtue, 
which believes that no man is true and brave and 
no woman pure and chaste, except for reward; the 
spirit which believes that every man has his price, 
and, having rendered his service, holds out his 
hand for a fee; the spirit which distrusts the real¬ 
ity of virtue in man and woman, which discrowns 
all heroes, dishonors all humanity, is the spirit of 
the deepest skepticism, the spirit of the worst 
atheism. 

* 

* * 

It is only the man that has faith in man who can 
really interpret man. It is faith in man that gives 
us all true human insight. The difference between 
a photograph and a portrait is this: The photograph 
gives the outward features, and stops there; and 
most of us, when we stand in a photograph saloon 
to have our picture taken, hide our soul away. The 
artist sees the soul behind the man, knows him, 
understands something of his nature, and paints 
the soul that looks out through the eyes. He sees 


276 


NEW STREAMS 


in the man something which the sun does not 
exhibit, and makes that something shine on the 
canvas. 

* 

* * 

God condemns no man to failure; there are vast 
differences between our achievements, but to each 
he gives not only the vision of success, but the 
power to attain it. 

* * 

God is continually loaded with responsibilities 
that belong to men. There is a perpetual throw¬ 
ing off of burdens, a constant resignation of trusts, 
a daily shirking of duties. “ It is the Lord’s will,” 
says the unsuccessful man in the same moment that 
he casts away the tools or the material which the 
Lord gave him to achieve success with. God is 
responsible for the manner of a man’s success be¬ 
cause that is largely determined by his surround¬ 
ings ; but for the success itself the man alone is 
always and everywhere responsible. Talents, gifts, 
opportunity are very unequally distributed, but the 
possibilities of energy, industry, persistence are 
shared alike by all men, and these are the qualities 
which not only win but command success. To 
have the power of trustworthy thought and yet be 
a superficial thinker, to have the faculty of per¬ 
suasive speech and yet deal out ill-constructed 
sentences and hastily arranged ideas, to have the 
power of the artist and yet paint weak pictures or 
carve soulless statues is to fail without a shadow 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


277 


of excuse; to throw that failure upon God is to 
add ingratitude to unfaithfulness. 

* 

* * 

The quality that wins and retains business suc¬ 
cess is not shrewdness but honesty. The most 
successful men are those who study how they can 
put the most into the world, and take out what 
commission it gives them for the work they do, 
and their worth they add to the world’s wealth. 

* 

* * 

The man who is always trying new experiments 
rarely succeeds in any of them; the man who 
finds one thing to do and does it, is the successful 
man. 

* 

* * 

Success consists always in doing something well; 
the first condition of success, therefore, is in know¬ 
ing what you can do, and in neither failing for 
want of self-confidence to use your powers, nor in 
trying, because of your self-conceit, to do what you 
have not the ability to do. 

* 

* * 

Success — what is success ? Who has succeeded ? 
Not the man who has acquired wealth, but the 
man who has known how to use it. The measure 
of a man is not what he has, but what use he 
makes of what he has. He whose home is a cot¬ 
tage with a sanded floor, who so uses it that love 


278 


NEW STREAMS 


and culture grow up beneath the clustering vine, is 
richer than he who dwells in a palace where selfish¬ 
ness reigns. 

* 

* * 

Majorities do not determine moral questions. 
There is no presumption in favor and none against 
what everybody does. Everybody is just about as 
apt to go wrong as right. Do not follow the flock 
of sheep over the wall. Look for yourself where 
you leap. The whole law is not fulfilled in this 
one word : Thou shalt not be odd. 

* # 

Doing is the highway to believing. Conduct is 
the basis of the creed. 

* 

* * 

We are measured not by where we are, but by 
the direction in which we are going. There is 
more temperance in the drunkard on his way from 
the gutter to the Inebriate Home than in the fash¬ 
ionable drinker on his way from the drawing-room 
to the gutter. 

* 

* * 

Every day is a day of judgment, every day a 
day that calls us to see what God means to do for 
us, what he means to disclose in us, what weakness 
and infirmity he means to show that we possess, 
that he may lead us out of our bondage into lib¬ 
erty, and out of our weakness into true divine 
manhood and womanhood. 


7iV OLD CHANNELS. 


279 


What you are and what you do is more import¬ 
ant than what you think. The problems of life are 
more important than the problems of mind. 

* 

* * 

It is as bad to keep Sunday on Monday as to 
keep Monday on Sunday. 

* 

* * 

The impulses of love are a better guide of con¬ 
duct than scrupulosity of conscience. 


The end of religion is character; the test of 
character is conduct. 

* 

* * 

Self-possession is the first condition of power. 
No man is rich unless his assets are available. 

* 

* * 

Eloquence is the apt utterance of intense convic¬ 
tions, of vital truth, spontaneously poured forth, in 
profound sympathy for men and women who need 
its ministrations. The conditions of eloquence are, 
first, a vital truth ; second, an intense conviction; 
third, a profound sympathy; fourth, a spontaneous 
utterance; and, last, and least, a felicitous form. 

# 

# * 

This is the true difference between the rhetori¬ 
cian and the orator; the one beguiles an audience 
with words, the other changes the current of their 
lives by truth. The instruments of the one are 


280 


NEW STREAMS 


language, elocution, gesture ; the instrument of the 
other is profound conviction. 

* 

* * 

True philanthropy involves personal feeling for 
the suffering. 

* 

* * 

Men put philanthropy and religion opposite one 
another ; but philanthropy is the heart of Christ’s 
religion. Love for God feeds and keeps patient 
and enduring love for men. But a love for God 
that is not manifested in and by love for men is a lie. 
* 

* * 

Two boys see a machine at work in the field; 
and they get into a quarrel about it. One of them 
says : “ It is a steam engine ; ” and the other says 

“ It is a threshing machine.” “ It is a steam en¬ 
gine.” “ It is a threshing machine.” “ It is a 
steam engine.” “ It is a threshing machine.” And 
so they battle back and forth whether it is a steam 
engine or a threshing machine. And they go to 
the farmer, who says, “ My boys, it is a steam en¬ 
gine and it is a threshing machine ; and we call it a 
steam engine because steam is the power that 
drives it, and we call it a threshing machine be¬ 
cause the work it does is threshing out the grain.” 
A man that in our nineteenth century undertakes 
to thresh out grain with a hand flail when there 
are steam-power threshing machines to do the 
work for him, is guilty of incredible ignorance and 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


281 


folly. Nevertheless, a man with a flail in his hand 
actually threshing out the wheat is a better thresh¬ 
ing machine than the best threshing machine that 
ever was made if it is housed under roof and never 
gets any grain out of the stalk. To be always 
kindling a fire, to be always getting up steam, and 
then to be always blowing off the steam to show 
how full we are of it — that is not to be a Chris¬ 
tian. To reach up the hand and get hold of the 
power, and then to set it to work grinding the 
grist — that is to follow Christ; and that is phi¬ 
lanthropy— love for man. 

* 

* * 

One of the most famous pictures which art has 
ever given to the world is Raphael’s painting of 
the Transfiguration. The scene on the mountain- 
top and the scene in the valley below are repre¬ 
sented on the same canvas. Artistically it is false; 
spiritually it is true. It is only when we put our 
transfiguration and our missionary experiences upon 
the same canvas that we profit by the one or 
achieve anything by the other. To stay on the 
mountain-top, as Peter would have staid, is to leave 
humanity to perish that we may enjoy the epicure¬ 
anism of a selfish piety. To stay in the valley is 
to deprive ourselves of the power to help human¬ 
ity. Philanthropy without piety is powerless; it 
cannot cast the devil out. Piety without philan¬ 
thropy is useless ; it scarcely knows that there is a 


282 


NEW STREAMS 


devil to be cast out. To bring inspiration from 
the mountain-top to cast out devils in the valley 
below, this is to follow Christ; this is Christian 
philanthropy. 

* 

* * 

Not only is Jesus Christ the greatest philanthro¬ 
pist of human history, but the God whom Jesus 
Christ revealed is the infinite and the eternal Phi¬ 
lanthropist of all time and all eternity. For what 
is philanthropy? The love of man. And the one 
central and grand revelation of Christ’s presence 
on the earth was this: God so loved the world of 
men that he gave himself for its redemption. 

* 

* * 

Without the mighty impulse to social service 
which thoughts of God alone can bring, humani- 
tarianism will become mechanical and superficial. 
To work for man without that uplift which comes 
from thoughts of God is like attempting to fly 
without wings. By thoughts of God Christian 
activity is fed. 

* 

* * 

No man can afford to disregard public opinion ; 
and no man ought to. Vox populi is not vox dei ; 
but the judgment of the majority is not to be 
despised. 

* 

* * 

A decent regard to the opinions of mankind is 
a necessary incentive and a necessary restraint. 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


283 


Honor is not virtue; but it is a guide to virtue. 
Provide things honorable in the sight of all men. 
This is very different from providing in the sight 
of all men things honorable. 

* 

* * 

The fear of public opinion is a poor substitute 
for the fear of God, and the fear of God is an in¬ 
adequate protection against temptation unless it be 
stronger than the fear of public opinion. 

* 

* * 

Never do in private what you are ashamed to 
have known in public. When you go to the 
theater tell the world — that is, your world. If 
you are not willing it should know, do not go. 
When you buy your wine, buy it openly. If you 
are afraid of the example, do not set it. This is 
the first rule. The second is like unto it. Neither 
seek fame or shun it. Neither hide in a corner nor 
exhibit yourself on a platform. Seek His glory 
that sent you; seek the honor that cometh from 
God only; set not your mind on high things; in 
honor prefer one another. Chinese Gordon is 
neither better nor worse for his yellow jacket and 
his peacock’s feathers. Wendell Phillips was no 
worse for the execrations bestowed on him in the 
battle, and no better for the encomiums lavished 
on him after the victory. Live for righteousness, 
duty, God. Be a king, whether crowned or un¬ 
crowned is no matter. Walk your journey faith- 


284 


NEW STREAMS 


fully and well; if the sun shines there will be a 
shadow; if not, there will be none; but it matters 
not, so you reach your journey’s end. 

* 

* * 

Respect for the opinions of mankind is some¬ 
times a good support for a tottering virtue, but it 
is a poor foundation on which to build virtue. It 
may serve as the wire which holds the tree in posi¬ 
tion till it has gotten root, but it is no root itself 
to hold the tree in position against the storm and 
give it life and strength. 

* 

* * 

The golden harvest lies in the future, not in the 
past; the Eden is yet to come; the Christian is to 
look not back to Adam, or Moses, or the Apostolic 
era for its kingdom of God; these are but seed, or 
blade, or ear; the full corn in the ear is the growth 
of the future. 

% 

* * 

Our religious problems are the problems of to¬ 
day, not of yesterday. We shall never make any 
progress in God’s school by copying on our slates 
the problems which our fathers did, looking in his¬ 
tory to see their answers, and writing those down. 
It is not answers, it is work, God wants of us. An 
old sermon is never a good sermon ; an old the¬ 
ology is never a good theology. It may be true; 
but it is not the truth which this age needs. Truth, 
like the manna of old time, must be gathered fresh 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


285 


every morning. If it is left till it becomes stale, it 
becomes inodorous. We are not to do Luther’s or 
Calvin’s or Finney’s work over again ; therefore 
we are not to think their thoughts over again, or 
use their words over again. 

* 

* * 

We are not to fight battles already fought, nor 
to win victories already won. We can imitate our 
fathers only by looking forward with the same 
prescience which they exercised, and meeting our 
problems of to-day and to-morrow with the same 
spirit of courage, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, with 
which they met theirs. Other men have labored; 
we are to enter into their labors. Time is too 
short to be spent in singing Te Deums over victo¬ 
ries which previous generations have won. We 
are neither to imagine that we can sit down and 
enjoy the fruits of their labor without labor our¬ 
selves, nor that we can prove ourselves heroes by 
fighting in sham battles the conflicts which they 
fought in real ones. 

* 

* # 

We are put into this world to make progress 
toward a better one. Progress, therefore, is the 
first law of our being. The world is a school; he 
that learns nothing is a dull scholar; had better 
never have been born. The age that learns noth¬ 
ing is a dunce. Every generation should be wiser, 
better, stronger than its predecessor. Religion is 


286 


NEW STREAMS 


no exception to this universal law of humanity. 
We are to grow both in the grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The man is 
to grow from year to year; the church is to grow 
from age to age. Every era should have some 
new theology, as every vine should have some new 
wood. As the body keeps healthy only by growth, 
only by casting away the old tissues and getting 
new ones, so the soul keeps healthy only by for¬ 
getting those things that are behind and pressing 
forward to those things that are before. He that 
is not growing is dead, and should be buried. 

* 

* * 

There is no way by which you can get religion 
once for all and have done with it. You can no 
more get health of soul than health of body by 
choosing to be well. You must choose to be well 
continuously: whenever idleness tempts you to 
oversleep, or ambition to overwork, or appetite 
to overeat. Theologians discuss whether there is 
such a thing as falling from grace. It seems to me 
to be the sorrowfulest and commonest experience 
of life. Everywhere about me I see young men 
and young women who have started out in life 
with highest aspirations, hopes, purposes, falling 
away from them into a dull routine of drudgery or 
a duller routine of daily pleasure. Everywhere I 
see men who had once consecrated themselves to 
God and their fellowmen, falling away from their 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


287 


consecration. The bud was full of hope, but the 
flower withers before it blooms; the tree was full 
of promise in May, but in September all the fruit 
has rotted on the branches. 

* * 

Directness is capable of a geometrical definition : 
it is the shortest road between two points. It is 
but rarely that “ the longest way round is the 
shortest way across;” tergiversation is bad policy 
as well as bad morals. 

# 

Directness is only another way of spelling right¬ 
eousness — rightness, or doing things according to 
right lines. The straightest and the simplest way 
is the best way. 

* 

* * 

A man that has no passion has no patience ; for 
patience is passion tamed. The man that has no 
temper is like an engine that has no steam in it. 

* 

* * 

Do not rake the fire out from under the boiler; 
keep the steam in the boiler ; you want it — all 
you have. Be angry! and sin not. 

* # 

Anger is wrong when it is fired by the lower 
passions. Most men are angry when their own in¬ 
terests are assailed, but bear with great patience 
wrongs inflicted on others. Anger fired by self- 


288 


NEW STREAMS 


love, or self-conceit, or self-will, is always despic¬ 
able. But anger fired by the higher impulses is 
noble, manly, divine. 

* 

* * 

Every great sin ought to arouse a great anger. 
Mob law is better than no law at all. A commu¬ 
nity which rises in its wrath to punish with misdi¬ 
rected anger a great wrong is in a healthier moral 
condition than a community which looks upon its 
perpetration with apathy and unconcern. 

* 

* * 

The spirit which flushes with resentment at an 
oath is infinitely better than the spirit which listens 
with indifference, or which laughs with pleasure. 
Abhor that which is evil, says the divine command ; 
no man is safe unless he does. 

* 

* # 

Do not teach your children never to be angry ; 
teach them how to be angry and sin not. 

* 

* * 

The man who is never angry is less than a man. 
Wrath is sometimes a virtue. Be ye angry and 
sin not, is the divine injunction. It interprets the 
instincts of a manly nature ; it is interpreted by 
the life of Christ. He was angry when he saw the 
only place of worship accessible to the Gentiles in 
Jerusalem turned into a market-place; and the 
buyers and sellers of cattle and changers of money 
fled from his flashing eye and wrathful presence, 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


289 


not from his harmless whip of rushes. He was 
angry when he saw the Pharisees binding on their 
disciples burdens grievous to be borne, and refusing 
to lift them with so much as their little finger ; and 
his wrath found expression in a lava stream of hot 
invective that has no parallel in literature. 

* 

* * 

The child should be taught to restrain his anger; 
but he cannot restrain it if he has not got it. An¬ 
ger is like fire — a good servant and a terrible 
master. Without capacity for anger Luther could 
not have fought the battle of the Reformation ; 
nor our fathers the war of the Revolution ; nor 
our reformers the war of emancipation. 

* 

* * 

Wrong to another aroused Christ’s fiery indigna¬ 
tion ; wrong to himself never did. Wrath is a 
virtue ; but never when personal or selfish consid¬ 
erations arouse it. 

* 

* * 

A moral discord should awaken resentment in 
a well-educated conscience, as a musical discord 
awakens resentment in a well-educated ear. The 
wrath of self-esteem, of approbativeness, of acquisi¬ 
tiveness, is dangerous and degrading. But it is 
both dangerous and degrading to be without a 
wrath of conscience, of reverence, of faith, and of 
love. The wrath of love? Aye! the wrath of 
love. This is the divinest and hottest wrath of all. 


290 


NEW STREAMS 


It is not enough to follow one’s conscience; we 
must also be careful to educate it. 

* * 

When a man has a conscience behind his will, 
and God behind his conscience, no man can put 
manacles upon his wrists. 

* 

* * 

Caution is the handmaid of courage; but the 
soul’s worst enemy if she be divorced from her 
brave husband. The only use of caution is to 
show us dangers to be overcome. When she bids 
us halt because of dangers too great to be over¬ 
come, she is a traitor, and deserves to die. 

* 

* * 

Oh! the misery and the meanness of envy — 
the most hateful child of a hateful mother. For of 
all the evil progeny born of the l6ve of approba¬ 
tion, envy is the meanest and the worst. It desires 
naught for itself except superiority over its fellows, 
and this it seeks to attain, not by lifting itself up, 
but bv casting its fellows down. From the love of 
praise the transition is easy and natural to that 
spirit which hates to hear praise bestowed upon 
another. This spirit is a stirrer-up of strife ; it 
poisons social conversation with slander and detrac¬ 
tion ; it entices to treachery and falseness and all 
underhand measures ; it undermines and destroys; 
it smiles upon its enemy, and smites him under 
the fifth rib. It is itself the mother of bitterness, 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


291 


wrath, backbiting, hypocrisy, treachery, murder, 
and all uncharitableness. Beware how you allow 
this evil spirit to rest for a day, for an hour, in 
your heart. Beware how you allow yourself in 
your inmost thought, in your most secret feeling, to 
wish ill of another’s enterprise or evil to another’s 
fame. Hate this evil spirit with a perfect hatred. 

* 

* * 

Honor that is sought is not honor. The place 
into which a man has pushed himself confers no 
credit on him. If there is no public and popular 
voice bestowing the title, the title is worse than 
meaningless, for it means self-seeking and self- 
serving. 

* 

* * 

Reputation is not character. Any one can soil 
my reputation; no one but myself can injure my 
character. Reputation is at best only the shadow 
which character casts; and the shadow depends far 
less on who you are than where you happen to be. 
* 

There are very few of us who are not at some 
time in our lives brought under the shadow of a 
false accusation. The natural way to meet it is by 
denial and self-defense. But that is not the New 
Testament way, nor the most effective way. There 
is a better, surer, and higher way. It is to give the 
false accusation a plain, simple, square denial, and 
then leave the life and the truth to do the rest. It 


292 


NEW STREAMS 


is not my business to take care of my reputation ; 
it is all I can do to take care of ray character. If 
that is clean and pure and luminous, the light that 
is in me will shine on and out, and by and by will 
pierce the clouds and dispel them. For clouds are 
temporary, because earthly; but sunshine is eter¬ 
nal, because divine. Any one can distort my 
shadow; but no one but myself can distort me; 
and if I am not distorted my shadow will not long 
be distorted. But if it is, what matter ? 

Do not run after accusers. Do not trouble your¬ 
self about false accusations. Only be sure to make 
them false ; then leave the falsehood to die. Go 
on with your life work; and accept the position in 
which false accusation, and consequent scandal and 
reproach, place you, only as a new opportunity to 
bear witness to the truth and the life by your own 
manifest and glorious possession of them. 

* 

* * 

No such worker anywhere in the range of our 
knowledge as Nature, yet how methodically she 
takes her rest! Month after month, when her 
yearly toil is harvested, she lies in deep slumber. 
No greed of gain or lust of speculation can disturb 
the repose of her autumnal revery or the silence of 
her wintry sleep ; even the birds are banished, that 
they may not break her rest. And the result is an 
immortality of fertility and beauty, recurring sum¬ 
mers redolent of flower and resonant of bird, with 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


293 


never a sign of weariness, a trace of exhaustion, or 
a touch of decay. Fields are perennially green 
and skies perpetually blue about men and women 
who sap the fountains of their strength and become 
old and outworn before their time in the very 
presence of eternal youth. 

* 

* * 

Repose of spirit, recurring periods of absolute 
rest, are as necessary for the hearts and minds of 
men and women as for the fields and meadows. 

* 

* * 

Christ is compared often to a mother who takes 
her weary child into her arms and rocks him to 
sleep. But what mother would have her child 
always sleeping? Sleep is but God’s preparation 
for better work on the morrow. Christ is often 
compared to a harbor. But the place for a ship is 
not idling in the harbor, but out on the ocean, 
fighting wind and wave and compelling them to 
serve her purpose and carry her and her cargo 
upon her voyage. As soon as she reaches her 
harbor she begins to prepare for a new voyage. 

Christ invites not merely those who are weary 
of sin, though he includes these. He invites not 
merely to rest from work, though he includes that. 
He invites all toiling ones to restfulness in their 
toil. Take my yoke upon you; learn of me; my 
yoke is easy, and my burden light. He invites not 
to inaction but to a change of activity. He invites 


294 


NEW STREAMS 


us to rest, not by unharnessing but by putting on 
a new harness. He gives the secret of working 
without weariness. Put on my yoke; learn of me. 
* 

* * 

Unremitting toil degrades as surely as uninter¬ 
rupted rest. Life should be neither a mountain 
cascade nor a still pool, but a flowing stream broken 
by pools. For man’s highest welfare, work — 
steady, serious, persistent work — is essential. The 
idler is never truly healthy. But rest — regular, 
periodic, fixed rest — is equally essential. He 
should have certain times when conscience should 
drive him from his toil as well as times when con¬ 
science should drive him to toil. The greater part 
of every man’s life is of necessity occupied with 
work in and for this present life. That is as it 
should be — as God meant it to be. But it is also 
necessary, nay, it is therefore necessary that he 
should set apart certain times in which he will 
stop this work-a-day work and in which he can 
give himself to higher thoughts; to the inner life; 
to the home affections; to God and immortality. 
These are bivouacs on the battle-field, noonings on 
the long tramp. 

* 

* * 

Learning comes by studying; wisdom by think¬ 
ing. Learning comes from without; wisdom from 
within. Learning is an acquisition; wisdom is a 
development. Learning may be forgotten, and so 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


295 


lost; wisdom is a part of the character, and so 
will abide forever. These two possessions are the 
greatest which any man can possess. 

■3£ 

* * 

There is a difference between learning and wis¬ 
dom. Learning is intellectual wealth; wisdom is 
intellectual power. Learned men are not always 
wise ; wise men are not always learned. Learning 
tends to give wisdom, but wisdom is by no means 
always the accompaniment of learning. Abraham 
Lincoln was not a learned man, but he was a very 
wise man. James the First of England is said to 
have been a learned man, but he certainly was not 
a wise man. 

* 

* * 

Drunkenness is simply beastly self-indulgence. 
It is without justification or excuse. It is a delib¬ 
erate unchaining of the chained beast which is in 
every man. It is a deliberate wallowing in the mire. 

* 

* * 

On all drunkenness the Bible puts the stamp 
of divine condemnation. It is aflame with God’s 
wrath against it. Impliedly, if not explicitly, it 
condemns all drinking for the excitement which 
the drink furnishes. 

* 

* * 

Every world-hero has been required to go 
through a soul-conflict in himself as preparation 
for the world-conflict. To win the victory for 


296 


NEW STREAMS 


others he must first win a victory for himself. 
These battle experiences have been fought alone. 
We can be on-lookers, not in-lookers. We can 
see that there is a struggle; what it is we cannot 
measure. The greater the soul, the clearer the 
prevision of impending passion, the more sensitive 
and shrinking the nature, the more impossible it is 
for another soul to enter into this experience; the 
more mystical it is and must be to all companions. 

* 

* * 

Life is a battle; every soul is a battle-ground, 
where malignant and beneficent forces are contend¬ 
ing for the mastery. What is it in that wonderful 
overture to Tannhauser which gives it so strong a 
hold upon human hearts? This: That in it bat¬ 
tling between good and evil, between the anarchy 
of sensual passion and the strong, sweet, holy 
accord of a nature divinely attuned, is represented 
with wonderful genius, and our hearts realize the 
truth and know that it interprets the symphony 
which each one of us is playing in his own life. We 
have seen the picture of a young man playing with 
the devil, his own soul wagered on the result, while 
an attendant angel stood by his side, watching with 
pitiful eyes, and suggesting now and then — this 
at least was indicated to the imagination — a move 
to the youthful player. Such is the game which I 
am playing, which every one of us is playing, with 
a watchful and malignant adversary, who loses no 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


297 


chance to win his game and destroy his opponent. 
In such a battle, who can afford to neglect the 
admonitions of the angel who stands by his side — 
the inspirations to truth and duty which come to 
him he knows not whence; the high impulses, the 
pure aspirations, which are like the angel’s sug¬ 
gestions of a successful move ? 

* 

* * 

Hope is a better incentive to noble living than 
fear, faith in a possible future than disgust with 
the present and the past, love suffused with pity 
than contempt combined with even a righteous 
wrath. 

* 

* # 

Ideas are not ripe for impression until they have 
become condensed and concentrated; and the man 
who waits over a new idea silently and patiently, 
with a deepening sense of responsibility, till all 
sides have been seen, all authorities consulted, is 
the man who, in rough farmer’s phrase, “boils his 
Words till he can give his hearers sugar and not sap.” 
* 

* * 

Smattering is really dissipation of energy ; only 
concentrated and prolonged efforts in one direction 
really train the mind, because only they train the 
will beneath it. Many little efforts of different 
sorts leave the mind like a piece of well used blot¬ 
ting paper, and the will like a rubber band stretched 
around bundles of objects too large for it to clasp 


298 


NEW STREAMS 


into unity. The knowledge of many things ought 
to be gotten only through the thorough knowledge 
of one thing; long study on a single subject, or 
concentration on a few subjects closely connected 
by method and manner, tend to give that sense of 
efficiency which is one of the deepest and proudest 
joys of life, in the place of a sense of possession so 
often attended by the misery of conscious weakness. 

* 

* * 

There are some people whose memories are like 
an overfilled garret into which all the lumber of 
the past years has gone, by reason of the careful 
mother and house-mother — so careful that she 
desires to destroy nothing, and so practically de¬ 
stroys everything by keeping so much that she can 
never find what she wants. But this lumbered-up 
memory is not the serving memory or the useful 
one. The well-equipped and well-ordered memory 
sifts out its lessons, treasures up that which is 
sacred, and flings the rest away. It gathers, it 
sorts, and it vivifies. There is something inexplic¬ 
ably marvelous in this power of the mind to seize 
at the moment of need that which it wants and 
that which it had utterly forgotten. There is 
something marvelous, inexplicably marvelous, in 
this power of a well-equipped and well-ordered 
memory, not merely to hold in reserve the forces 
and lessons of the past, not merely to forget that 
which ought to be forgotten — for a good forget- 


L V OLD CHANNELS. 


299 


tery is as valuable as a good memory — but also so 
to hold that which is to be remembered that in the 
instant of need it flashes on the mind. 

* 

* * 

Memory is the root that runs deep down into 
the past and gathers out of it that which feeds and 
builds up the limbs and branches and leaves and 
blossoms and fruit. There are some people who 
do seem to be no wiser for what they have learned 
and no richer for what they have experienced. 
Suffering has not made them stronger, blundering 
has not made them wiser; even sin and the sting 
of it has not made them careful to avoid a repetition 
of the same old sin ; and opening blessings and en¬ 
riching love have put no new song into their hearts, 
and put no new radiance on their faces. On such 
life writes as one writes with his finger on the 
sands, and the sea comes and sweeps over the writ¬ 
ing and leaves the beach bare as before. Such 
memories as these are like a boy’s pocket with a 
great hole in it. He puts pennies in it, and the 
pennies drop out as fast as he puts them in. Mem¬ 
ory’s pocket, with a hole in it, is like the boy’s 
pocket with a hole in it — no richer for what he 
thinks he has accumulated. 

* 

* * 

There is no doubt that persistence is the back¬ 
bone of a successful life; it keeps the purpose 
clear, the end distinctly in view from every point 


800 


NEW STREAMS 


of the journey; it gives continuity to effort and 
increases the volume of power by continual ac¬ 
cumulation. The most gifted men often fail be¬ 
cause they lack this quality; they make splendid 
efforts and win brilliant battles, but their efforts 
are desultory, their battles isolated from any gen¬ 
eral plan, and their victories barren. They are 
always promising a conquest which they never 
achieve. Their careers are like some of the cam¬ 
paigns of Charles the Fifth and Francis the First; 
they are full of well-fought battles, but they lead 
to nothing. The man who sets himself to win a 
high and worthy success and holds resolutely to 
his purpose learns, like Peter the Great, the les¬ 
son of mastery in the hard school of defeat. His 
mishaps and difficulties only clarify and exalt his 
purpose; obstacles only make it more resolute, 
and at last it discloses itself to the world by a 
permanent achievement. 

* 

* # 

The tremendous power of nature is largely per¬ 
sistency ; rocks can be worn away by the slow 
action of tides as surely as by the sudden wrench¬ 
ing of the earthquake. And nature works with 
the man who follows her methods; the persistent 
man becomes an increasing power as he moves for¬ 
ward through life. He is a steady current onward, 
and as he sweeps along there is a steady increase 
of volume and momentum. If you wish to achieve 


IN OLD CHANNELS. 


301 


a lasting result in life, get your purpose clear and 
then adhere to it with inflexible determination ; 
there are no upward roads that are not overshad¬ 
owed by storms and beaten upon by tempests, but 
at the summit there is always sunshine. 

* 

* * 

The notion that if God has any resources of 
mercy for the pagan after death we would better 
not preach the Gospel to them now, lest we destroy 
it, is preposterous even on an infidel platform. 
Man is estranged from his God now. Every hour 
of estrangement is an added hour of wickedness 
and wretchedness. Who will waste time discus¬ 
sing whether Sir John Franklin can possibly strug¬ 
gle through another Arctic winter, if there is a 
possibility of rescuing him at once ? What father 
will stand idly by and see his son go on in ways of 
moral degradation while he debates possibilities of 
reform in an old age ? Suffering is not the worst 
evil that can befall a soul. The prodigal was as 
much to be pitied when he was wasting his sub¬ 
stance with riotous living as when he was feeding 
swine and eating husks. 

The motive power which the churches need 
for missionary work, both at home and abroad, 
is not a new dogmatism, nor an old one re-en¬ 
forced, about the uncertainties of the future, it 
is a profound spiritual sense of what the Apostle, 
with profound spiritual insight, calls “ the exceed- 


302 NEW STREAMS 

ing sinfulness of sin; ” it is a burden of heart 
at the unutterable horror of the present hell of 
sensuality, cruelty, animalism, pride, ambition ; the 
unutterable horror of a heart separated from its 
Father and petrified against all the sunny influences 
of his love; and a profound sense of the height, 
and depth, and length, and breadth of that love 
which passeth knowledge. A sense of it? Nay! 
a possession of it, until every faculty thrills with 
it, and every aspiration and ambition is uplifted by 
it, and every desire is enlarged and purified by it, 
and the soul can contain itself no longer, but must 
overflow from its very fullness, as the spring from 
the mountain side which can no longer contain its 
heaven-bestowed gift of life-giving water. 

* 

* * 

The age in which belief in divine wrath was 
strongest and belief in divine love was weakest, in 
which no man was bold enough to doubt that the 
pagans were doomed to eternal punishment — a 
punishment represented in terrible parables by the 
rack and the fagot — this was not the era of Chris¬ 
tian missions. 

As the church has grown to see in Jesus Christ 
the image of God, as it has grown to impute 
to the everlasting Father the tenderness that 
was in the well-beloved Son, as it has come to 
behold in Christ’s words to the shrinking woman, 
“Neither do I condemn thee,” a prophetic figure 


/y OLD CHANNELS. 


303 


of him upon his judgment throne with the igno¬ 
rant guilty before him it, has come also to imbibe 
his pity, to long with his travail of soui for the 
purchase of men from the prison-house of then- 
present death, and to go in his spirit of self-conse¬ 
cration to seek and to save that which is lost. As 
faith in the Fatherhood of God and the infinite 
mercies of Christ has deepened, the motive power 
of Christian missions has increased in the Christian 
churches. Love for Christ and pity for the Christ- 
less is the secret of that power. 

* 

* * 

No church is in its fullness a Christian church 
which is not doing in some form an aggressive 
missionary work ; no worker is in the broadest and 
largest sense a Christian worker who is not doing 
any missionary work. The first duty of the church 
is not to take care of itself and its own, using a 
little of its surplus to preach the gospel to those 
who are without; this is not following Christ. 
The church exists for the purpose of preaching the 
gospel to those who are without; it is an army or¬ 
ganized for a campaign ; a light set up that it might 
shed light abroad. A characteristic difference, one 
of the most important characteristic differences be¬ 
tween the Christian religion and the Jewish religion 
is just this: that the Christian religion is aggres¬ 
sive, missionary, imparting of itself freely as it has 
received freely. 


304 


NEW STREAMS 


Christ is in his world — he is not dead! he is not 
dead! he is marching still, and more and more the 
recruits are gathering behind and following after 
him; for to follow Christ is to seek to carry faith 
to eyes that are blind, and hope to hearts that are 
despairing, and help to souls that are helpless. 


INDEX 


A 

Aspiration . 


. 6-12 

Atonement . 


77-81 

Agnosticism . 


184-187 

Anger . 


287-289 

Approbation . 


. 278 

Acquaintance 


. 270 

Amusements 


234-237 

Assertiveness, Self 


. 218 

B 

Benevolence . 


. 255 

Business 

• 

264-266 

Bible, The 

• 

. 66-75 

C 

Christ, Personal . 


. 48-57 

Christ, Divinity of 


. 80-84 

Christ, Teaching of 


84 

Christ in the World 


. 304 

Christ in Nature . 


. 57-59 

Compassion, Divine 

• 

. 45-46 

Confidence, Self . 


219-221 

Care 


225-226 

Consciousness, Self 


221-222 

Counsel, Friendly 


256-257 

Character, Christian 


59-61 

Character, To be a 


. 61-65 

Church, The . 


. 84-88 


Creeds . 

# . 

. 94-97 

Christianity . 

• • 

99-103 

Conversion . 

# . 

. 172 

Courage — CoAvardice 

176-180 

Communion — 

Lord’s Supper 167 

Conversation 

• . 

194-196 

Criticism 

, # 

197-198 

Consecration. 

• # 

. 204 

Children 


209-211 

Concentration 

# . 

297 

Conscience 

• . 

. 290 

Caution . 

• . 

. 290 

Censoriousness 

• • 

. 272 

Cynicism 

• • 

272-275 

Conduct 

, . 

278-279 


D 


Debt 



270-271 

Doubt . 



. 171 

Discipline 



. 172 

Death . 



. 155 

Directness 



247-287 

Duty 



247-250 

Depravity, Natural 


. 169 


E 



Experience 

• » 

• 

. 46-48 

Evolution 

• • 

• 

. 181 

Envy 

• 

• 

. 290 














306 INDEX. 


Error 

205-206 

Eloquence 

. 279 

F 

Falsehood 

. 19S-199 

Faith 

149-154 

Future, Eternal . 

163-164 

Feeling . 

. 170 

Friendship . 

245-246 


G 


Gratitude . . .• 240-241 

Gospel, The . . . 201-203 

God in Phenomena , 144-145 

God, Conception of • . 75-76 

God, Goodness of . . 76-77 

God in Ilumauity . 140-141 

God in the Soul . . 142-143 

Grit .... 217-218 

H 

Humility .... 23-26 
Health .... 215-216 

Heroism . . . 237-238 

Happiness . . . 243-244 

Honesty .... 225 

Hope.297 

Honor .... 291-292 

I 

Infidelity . . . 266-268 

Intuition, Woman’s . . 215 

Innocence .... 255 
Immortality . . . 160-161 

Ideals ..... 207 


K 

Knowledge of Men, Christ’s 53-56 


L 


Leisure .... 

. 256 

Love .... 

. 13-21 

Learning and Wisdom 

294-295 

Liberty .... 

. 97-99 

Law .... 

121-125 

Leaders of Thought 

189-192 

Life, Spiritual 

. 186 


M 


Misanthropy. 


. 242 

Music . 


. 245 

Money . 


223-225 

Memory. 


298-299 

Missions, Christian 


302-303 

Marriage 


212-215 

N 

Nature . 

• 

182-183 

O 

Obedience 

. 

110-114 

Opportunity . 

• 

262-264 

P 

Parents . 


208-209 

Principle 


238-239 

Personality . 


193-194 

Pulpit and Preaching 


. 88-94 

Philanthropy 


280-282 

Public Opinion 


282-284 

Progress 


284-286 

Promptness . 


268-270 

Philosophy . 


. 270 

Peace 


. 229 

Prayer — Prayer-Meeting 

165-166 

Penalty — Punishment 

250-251 

Persistency . 

. 

299-301 
















INDEX. 


307 


R 



Service for Christ 


136-140 





Self-possession 


. 279 

Redemption, Christ’s 

• 

146-148 

Success . 


276-278 

Resim-ection 

from 

the 


Socialism 


254-255 

Dead • 



155-159 

Submission . 


. 149 

Receptivity . 



260-262 

Soul-Conflict. 


295-297 

Reputation . 



. 291 




Rest 



291-294 

rp 



Remorse 



204-205 

1 



Repentance . 



109-110 

Temptation . 

. 

. 271 

Respect, Self 



. 218 

Teaching of Christ 

# 

. 84-88 

Reading 



239-240 

Truth . 

9 

114-117 

Righteousness 



. 200 

Truth, Investigation of 

117-121 

Religion 



. 27-36 

Thought, Leaders of 

. 

189-193 





Theology 

. 

. 1-5 


S 



Thrift . 

• 

199-200 

Service for Others 

# 

36 

U 



Sorrow . 

• 

. 

. 37-38 



Sacrifice 

• 

• 

. 38-45 

Unity, Christian . 

• 

168-169 

Solitude 

• 

• 

227-229 




Science . 

• 

• 

181-183 

W 



Selection of Men for God’s 




Work . 


• 

186-188 

Work 

• 

257-259 

Salvation 

• 

• 

104-109 

World, Spirit 

• 

187-189 

Sin . 

• 

• 

126-132 

Words . 

• 

230-234 

Sin, Forgiveness of 

. 

132-136 

'Wealth . 

• 

222-223 















✓ 









































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